


The Department

by lokilickedme



Category: Andrew Hozier-Byrne (Musician), Chris Evans - Fandom, Jason Momoa - Fandom, Multi-Fandom, Original Work, Tom Hardy - Fandom, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Accidental Plot, Andrew Hozier-Byrne - AU, Awkward Tension, Boss/Employee Relationship, Car Sex, Chris Evans - AU, Confused Chief, Dave Bautista - AU, David Tennant - AU, Desk Sex, Dominant Greta, Eventual Romance, Explicit Language, F/M, Fake Dating, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Female Friendship, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Good Cop Bad Cop, Grinding, Groping, Heavy Drinking, Jason Momoa - AU - Freeform, Jealous Chief, Male-Female Friendship, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multiple Pairings, Multiple Partners, Mutual Pining, One Night Stands, Oral Sex, References to Drugs, Sebastian Stan - AU, Sex, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Burn, Strong Female Characters, Tom Hardy - AU, Tom Hiddleston - AU, Whump, a lot of bad decisions and good sex, affectionate sex between friends, battle of wills, but it's hidden under a thick layer of denial, cute guys, fast flame, followed by a slow burn, good humored bad behavior, hot kissing, ice hockey as foreplay, llamas at large, minor (fake) gunplay, offensive language, or rather fairly decent cop/completely irredeemable idiots, scrambled eggs as aftercare, sexism in the workplace, slow burn starting to heat up, snangst, snark and angst, strangers to fuckbuddies to friends, submissive andy, vague mention of accidental death in the prologue, whump against Andy, whump against Chief, whump against Greta, wild sex between co-workers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2020-06-24 18:12:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 148,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19729045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokilickedme/pseuds/lokilickedme
Summary: Greta Morley, LAPD, professional driver with the most decorated anti-drugs team in the Greater Los Angeles area, is just one bad call away from suspension. Figuring her relationship with her boss will afford her some leeway to do what she thinks is the right thing, she makes that call...and ends up transferred to a small snowy town in Minnesota to wait out her departmental review. Cop shops are the same wherever you go, right? Do your job, lay low, obey orders, get back to LA quick...except this is the Weemeetwa PD, and NOTHING here comes even remotely close to following the rules. The Chief of Police is a stupidly handsome ex hockey player ruling the roost over a department full of misfits, assorted lawbreakers, and a drug sniffing dog that barks at the pot-dealing office assistant all day. Could be worse, right?Nope, it couldn't be worse. And Greta is stuck here for a year waiting for the higher-ups in LA to forget what she did so she can go back to her job in the real world. But until then it's a full schedule of donut runs, snowball fights escalating into comicbook violence, llama attacks, and resisting the urge to arrest her own co-workers for criminal misogyny and sexual harassment.Just. One. Year.





	1. Prologue - Your Boatload of Bad Decisions Has Left The Harbor

**...PROLOGUE...**

****June 20, 2018** **

_“Greta, can you hear me?”_

_Beep…beep…beep…_

_“Greta - honey listen, you need to answer me. Can you hear me?”_

_…beep…_

I remember that day. Not the beeping machine day, when all I was aware of was my boss frantically trying to figure out whether or not I was brain dead and the irritating neverending electronic noise of technology insisting that my heart was still beating. That’s about it for that day, and even that is shrouded in so much fog and confusion that I wonder sometimes if I dreamed it. The Captain's voice could have been anyone's, I suppose...though I do like to think it was Hawk, hovering concerned over me, brows furrowed and on the verge of panic thinking about how much paperwork it was going to cost him if I punched the clock on his watch.

What I remember clearly is the day that led to it.

It was a Thursday. Nice weather, a little on the hot side but nothing too unbearable. The air conditioner in the car was blowing foggy ice cold air that I had aimed at my neck. My partner Joe was drinking coffee, singing in Italian like he tended to do during pursuits. 

The speedometer was edging up on eighty six, nothing out of the ordinary since we were on the long broad straightaways headed toward the badlands with not much traffic and not so much as a dip in the road to throw us off our groove. We’d only been in pursuit for a few minutes and the city wasn’t that far behind us, but now all that glorious asphalt stretched in front of us, ready for maximum traversal. 

87.5…the skyscrapers in the rear view mirror fell away to a flat heat-distorted horizon. Hitting 88 mph was always our hootandhollar moment, that threshold separating a run of the mill pursuit from the adrenaline charged triple-digit chases we lived for.

“Time to Back To The Future it?” 

Joe looked over and grinned. 

“Give it a little gas baby, lets do some time travel.”

That was the last thing he got out before we were plowed into from behind.

“Geezus fuck there’s three now.” 

“I see him.” 

Joe was loading up, still singing that crazy Italian love song while he prepped his 580 for interaction. _Interaction_. A polite term for _gonna shoot some perp’s tires out and maybe pepper his ass with buckshot while we’re at it._ The car behind us was gaining rapidly, having slowed a bit after ramming into our driver side quarterpanel and going into a tightly controlled broadslide before righting itself and coming into pursuit. I was keeping an eye on it in the rearview mirror, but my attention was focused mainly on the car ahead of us. It was carrying approximately three, possibly four of Los Angeles’ most wanted and a trunkload of smuggled weapons, no doubt headed for distribution on the most vulnerable underprivileged streets of the north side. Needless to say they were evading arrest. LA HSPT Unit 2 had already been taken out of action with two blown tires, so my partner and I were now it.

And a third vehicle, a blacked out Escalade, had just joined the party and was running alongside us. The driver side window came down just far enough for a hand to snake out with its middle finger up.

"Well that's just rude," Joe whined. "Why do they get windows that roll down?"

"Because Hawk knows if he gives you functioning windows you're gonna be shoving your naked ass out and getting it shot off."

The Escalade swerved and nearly slammed us. "That's it, somebody's gettin' hail damage." Joe reached up and slid the roof panel open, unbuckling his harness to stand up while I scrambled to hook the safety tether to his belt and keep us straight. Edging up on 120 mph and so much as a wobble in the wheel can flip a car.

_"Division 25 High Speed Pursuit Team 1 report status."_

The first blast of tactical buckshot peppered the rear quarter of the Escalade's driver side and it swerved again, nearly clipping our fender as it lagged under the sudden impetus reduction of rapidly losing air pressure in the left rear tire. "PT1 in pursuit of a 2018 Lexus RX currently eastbound on the 412. A 2017 Escalade has engaged and a Ford uhh - Joe what's behind us?"

Joe dropped back into his seat to reload and craned his head around to look out the back window. "It's a Shelby," he groaned. "Supercharger. Gonna be a goddamn shame to ding that one up." The cartridge clacked into place and he shot me an _Oh well_ shrug. "Guess I better get started on that."

_"PT1 respond."_

"And there's a Shelby behind us. Nobody's shot at us yet but the Escalade flipped Officer Martino off. He's currently engaging."

There was a long pause over the radio and I knew whose voice I was about to hear. Joe took aim with the shortbarrel, blasted off a round that took out the Shelby's windshield, and plopped back down into his seat again. "Any instructions?"

"She's getting Hawk."

"Oh fuck."

_"PT1 drop pursuit. Let them go."_

"What? Why?"

_"Do it PT1, this is a direct order from the Captain. Disengage and break away, team 2 is out of commission and you are not to apprehend without backup."_

"But - "

Hawk's voice took the comm, no nonsense as usual and every bit as threatening as it always was.

_"Get your asses out of there Greta, I'm giving you a direct order."_

It was a typical day at work, really. Me and Joe and a 2018 Dodge Charger-Challenger Hellcat hybrid outfitted with a supersonic Hemi motor and a crush resistant roll cage, bulletproof windows, and sidepanel armoring. A sexy tank engineered special by the Chrysler Motor Company and paid for by the good people of LA County to the tune of a quarter of a million taxpayer dollars, capable of reaching and maintaining a top speed of 220 mph for sustained periods of time, just a fucking _ _monster__. It could go even faster in its stripped down state, minus the heavy protective caging and reinforcement that allowed it to be used as an offensive weapon. Division 25 was authorized to use its vehicles the same way the rest of the department used sidearms and artillery - any means necessary to halt and apprehend. Meaning if stopping a bad guy in a hopped up getaway car required involving yourself in a carefully controlled vehicular incident, the gas pedal was your trigger and you had permission to shoot at your own discretion. 

_Any Means,_ that was what we called the car. 

And on this particular Thursday, June the 20th of the year 2018, I made the call that put me and Joe in the middle of the biggest vehicular incident the LAPD had ever seen. 

It also earned me a departmental reprimand, a jurisdictional review, a six month suspension, a twice-weekly standing appointment with a therapist named Bob, and a nasty addiction to rotgut whiskey. 

Also, Joe got a formal invite to the Pearly Gates.

This is how I ended up in Minnesota.

_**To be continued...** _


	2. Minnewhatever

**Six months later**

_“Minnesota?!?”_

Hawk scrubbed his face with his hands and shushed me, but all the preemptive shhhh's in the world weren't going to hold back what was about to come out of my mouth. The only thing that could delay it was my own shock and horror, and it wasn't doing a very fair job of it. "Why?! Why Minnesota?? Can't you just boot me down to a desk job for a few months? Move me to Records. Hell if you have to get me out of here move me to Southside, I'll ride shotgun on their backup team."

He wasn't budging and I knew the papers were already signed. And Hawk signed everything in ironclad ink.

"Come on Captain, please don't take me out of the car."

His left eyebrow, the one he used to convey bemusement and suspicion, shot up at my use of his title. The only time I ever called him Captain was when we were in bed and I was trying to talk him into getting up to get me another glass of wine. On rare occasions I used it in the office as a sweettalk method for getting my way. It rarely worked in either case but that never stopped me trying.

Granted, it had been a while since I'd been in a situation to use it outside the office. He lowered the brow and hit me up with its nasty opposite number, the creased forehead of rising frustration.

"You mean the car that's sitting in the scrap yard in a nice tidy little six-by-six block of twisted scorched steel?" He sighed and tossed his stressy ball onto the desk. It had permanent dents in it and what looked suspiciously like teeth marks. "You know I can't put you behind the wheel again until you're cleared - if ever."

I ignored that last bit. Never driving again wasn't an outcome I could in any way live with. "But Wisconsin?? And my final review is in three months."

"Minnesota. And the judicial inquiry hasn't even started yet."

"Manitoba, whatever. All the midwestern states are the same." He rolled his eyes but I kept going. "I've never even been to Oregon, what the hell am I supposed to do in Minnetonka?"

“It’s your one shot, Greta. You get yourself sorted and you do a good job there, then we’ll see about bringing you back here. A year, two, tops.”

I wasn't listening, already cycling through all the ways I knew I could talk him out of it when the words caught up and dragged a horrifying reality with them. “ _A YEAR OR TWO?!_ Are you fucking kidding me Paul?!”

This was a record for me, cycling through all of his names and titles in a single conversation. But he wasn't impressed, and when he dragged his eyes away from the slowly rolling stressy ball to look at me, the sympathy there was only barely concealed by the stonefaced hardass determination I'd always admired in him.

“Greta, this is your only chance, take it or leave it. But know that if you don’t take it - “ He paused, reaching out to knock the ball into the wastepaper bin with one long finger. “If you don’t take it, you’ll never work in law enforcement again. This is it. One chance.” 

**Somewhere in Minnesota**

“Can I buy you a drink?” 

I already had one, but I skulled back the remains and lifted the empty glass in salute to the best idea I’d heard all night. Days. Hell…weeks. I'd arrived at the coldest pit of Hades that morning and spent the day wandering around an unfamiliar apartment full of boxes, wallowing in disbelief that my banishment had actually happened. Hawk had signed the papers and sent me off. I was someone else's problem now.

For the next one to two years, if I behaved.

“You can. If that’s an Irish accent I’m hearing you can buy me two.”

The tallest boy I’ve ever to this day seen in my entire _life_ sort of awkwardly seated himself on the bar stool next to mine and raised two ridiculously long fingers to the bartender, gracing my cranky and mostly inebriated self with a shy smile that sent a lusty sort of warmth all the way down to my knickers. What fingers like that could do to a girl, geezus. I’d had one - two? - too many already, but losing consciousness in front of strangers had never stopped me before. The bartender shot me a scowl and delivered the goods anyway. Two whiskeys. I’d been there long enough that he knew what I wanted.

Long boy turned to me and raised his glass.

“It is. County Louth. _Sláinte_.” He slugged back a shot while I admired him, a bit brazenly but Glenfidditch does amazing things for inhibitions.

There was a lilt to the back end of his words that I knew I’d recognized. And he had long wavy dark hair that curled up on the ends and plush lips that looked like he’d been sucking peaches…and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t make enough bad decisions in the next ten seconds to fill my quota for a decade. 

But that’s sorta what I do.

“Oh…oh shit.”

Long wavy hair, across my pillow.

Across my _face _.__

Distinctly not mine - I was devoid of corkscrew curls the last time I dared to look in a mirror, and this was a dark chestnut Methuselah's mane of unruly wildness that seemed vaguely familiar. A long lanky body rolled over next to me and let out one of those soft little morning moans that usually indicate the moaner is either about to wake up, or might possibly be considering staying asleep just long enough to finish whatever lusty little wet dream their subconscious is currently indulging in.

A pair of decidedly plush lips nuzzled into my shoulder and the previous night’s activities did me the honor of rushing in and bringing an impending asskicker of a hangover with them.

The Irishman from the bar.

“Oh _shit_.”

“Mmmm.” He cuddled closer, all arms and legs and an unwelcome invasion of my personal space under the blankets. There was a vague recollection of someone being tied to the headboard and I gave my wrists a quick check. Nope, not me this time.

He stretched and rubbed his eyes, and in the too bright morning sunlight coming through the window over the bed, the pale pink of my panties taunted me from where they were tied around his right wrist.

“No no no, do _not_ get comfortable. NO.” I gave him a shove, yanking the sheet off him to cover my nakedass self. “Get out! Get out get out _get out!!”_

“Geezus, stop,” he groaned. All that insane hair fell out of the way when he turned onto his back, exposing hickeys all over his damn neck and shoulders the exact size and shape of my mouth. “This is my place.”

“What?”

“My place. Not yours.” A long arm snaked out from under the blanket and waved disinterestedly toward the door. “ _You_ get out.”

I gave the blankets another good hard yank, exposing about forty yards worth of hairy Irish legs to the chilly morning air and bringing a yelping moan out of my erstwhile bed partner. My decision-making abilities were questionable at best in the most favorable of times, but as he rolled over and tried to tuck himself up under me, the sad truth of my current reality blasted into the back of my already throbbing skull.

I couldn't even be trusted to pick my own outfit for the day without bringing the consequences of a dozen lousy judgement calls crashing down around me.

How fortunate, then, that I wouldn't have to - my crumpled jeans and tee shirt from the night before were the only option available to me, laying discarded on the floor next to the bed with my shoes on top of them. I sat staring at them, wondering how and why my footwear seemed to be the last thing shucked in the previous evening's poorly thought out and obviously even more poorly executed festivities. A stupidly big hand with ridiculously long fingers bumped against my bare thigh and I looked down at it. My underwear were still looped around Irish boy's wrist.

I've never been more grateful in my life for that blissful sort of confused blankness that comes the morning after a really debauched bout of drunken sex, because whatever O'Cutiepie and I got up to during the night while all that glorious Glenfidditch filtered itself through the good-judgement/bad-judgement centers of our brains, it could never be enough to convince me I wasn't going to hate this place with every iota of my impressive capacity for loathing until the day I left it.

One to two years, if I behaved.

I pushed his hand off my leg.

_Welcome to Minnewhatever, Greta._

**To be Continued...**


	3. A Logging Truck, A Mountain, and A Blonde Walk Into A Bar

The sun was too damn bright for the way I was feeling and I took a step back. Wherever the hell I was, it wasn't what I'd signed on for. Putting an LA girl in this...this...whatever _this_ was was just cruel and unusual and I was sure as hell going to be filing a verbal complaint about it as soon as I got to someplace that had decent cellphone reception. It had snowed - snowed! - sometime during the night while I was banging some stranger's bed into the wall and everything was white. White and godawful _bright_. Not two things one wants to be confronted with while a hangover is threatening mass genocide on your brain cells. Irish boy was behind me and I bumped into him, nearly coming out of my skin when a slow passing truck blasted its horn and a big redneck leaned out the window to yell at us. He was beating on the side of the truck and hooting like a fucking fool.

_"Shag and bag Burns!"_

The Irish guy laughed, but went straightfaced when I turned to look at him.

"What's that mean?"

He shrugged and waved at the truck. "I dunno."

"You're full of shit."

"Yeah."

The headache from my previous night's stupidity was already on a first name basis with me and I didn't have a lot of patience for much of anything, noise and sunlight in general and the stupidly cute but obviously braincell deficient guy I'd just spent a regrettable night exchanging questionable bodily fluids with in a town whose name I didn't even know in _particular_. I turned to light into him for all of the above and realized I didn't know his name, either.

"Who are you?"

He touched his chest as if I wasn't going to know who he was referring to if he didn't point at himself while doing it. "Andy."

"Okay Andy. Is this one of those places where everybody knows everybody else's business and you all went to school together and your mom is cousins with the mayor who is also the mailman and everyone is somehow related?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

“Oh great, I’m stuck in Roosterfuck Arkansas.”

Andy fired up what didn't look at all like a legally acquired smoke and eyed me, nodding. “Badgerfart Minnesota, actually.”

“Even better.” I glared around at the snow, at the sunlight, at the lack of traffic or any real sign of life other than the redneck currently spinning his tires at the stop sign on the corner. The smoke coming from Andy's suspicious cigarette smelled like dirty laundry basting in sweet tea and it sent my stomach on an unpleasant simulation of a Thunder Mountain ride. "Listen, cutiepie - I'm gonna be late for my first day of work and I have no clue how to get there from here. Everything looks different than it did last night."

"Where do you work?"

"The station."

"Give me a lift and I'll show you. That's where I'm going."

I didn't think to ask why he was going to the police station. Somewhere in my pounding skull I probably figured he had a meeting with his parole officer, but my brain hurt too much to bother thinking about it.

The station didn't look much like a station, but comparing Greater LA with this podunk burg was a bit like putting a Geo next to a Bentley. All the businesses obviously doubled as things other than their main identities, like a bunch of brick Clark Kents who stripped off their button-downs after dark to become some broken down version of Superman to the next set of clients. Dual-identity signs were everywhere. Supermarket/bingo parlor. Dog groomer/skating rink. Library/auto parts store.

The station absolutely looked like it was going to have a knitting club meeting in the basement at noon.

Irish Andy disappeared around the back of the building as soon as we got out of my car - which wasn't a car so much as a beat up Chevy truck loaned to me by the good people of whatever they called this place. It needed a plug job and a hell of a tuneup, but once it backfired a half dozen times and finished lurching into gear-grinding life it seemed to be a halfway reliable, if rattly and emissions-regulation defying, means of transport. I figured the station would assign me a squad car sooner or later. My plan was to finesse, blackmail, or otherwise scam my way out of my exile before I'd been here long enough to actually need one, and I felt confident in my abilities to do just that. Hawk would start missing me and after a few pleading phonecalls from my end he would work his magic with his superiors back in LA and I'd be here a month, two months tops before the paperwork came through for another reassignment and I'd be home. All would be forgiven and I'd be back on duty where I belonged.

Nothing would be forgotten though, I knew not to expect that much. But I could live with probation, disciplinary demotion, whatever Hawk could get for me in whatever desperate plea bargain he'd be able to negotiate in my behalf. Anything was better than this.

I took a deep breath and resigned myself to my temporary fate. I couldn't speed things up just yet, but goddamnit I was going to own my banishment to this fuckhole.

**Weemeetwa Police Department**

"You lost?"

"Excuse me?"

"The school's three blocks over."

"What school?"

"You the new kindergarten teacher?"

"I sure as hell hope not."

A huge guy roughly the size of a logging truck and every bit as shabby looking as one stood up from where he'd been sitting, perched on the corner of a desk that could have come out of a turn of the century damaged furniture liquidation sale. Everything in the place looked old and beat up, and he fit right in with his surroundings. "You Miss Clootie from Turnbow?"

"No, I'm the transfer. From LA." He stared at me with a look of total and complete incomprehension so I slowed down and enunciated clearly for him, adopting Irish Andy's chest-tapping gesture to let him know who I was referring to. "Officer Morley, Los Angeles Division 25. I've been transferred here. You're expecting me."

"I'm not expecting you." He looked over his shoulder at the blonde woman seated behind the desk. "You expecting her?"

She rolled her eyes at me over the top of her little half-glasses and leaned back to knock on the window behind her. "Chief's having a morning, I'd take a seat if I were you. It could be a minute."

I wasn't sure where to sit; the only chair that didn't have a butt already planted in it was behind a desk that was obviously currently in use by someone who'd be coming back, judging from the half eaten breakfast burrito and messy paperwork scattered across it. The living logging truck planted his butt down on the blonde woman's desk again and stared at me. The smarmy grin on his face was more irritating than worrisome and I gave him a hard stare back.

"Officer Morley," he drawled, managing somehow to cram so much smug condescension into those two words that my hackles immediately raised. "From LA."

"That would be me."

"Huh." Eyes that under any other circumstances I would have labeled _sparkly and dancing_ swept up and down the length of me with absolute disdain, making what came out of his mouth next not so much a shock as a confusing tossup of words. "Does Chief know you're a broad?"

I tried to keep my eyebrows down, I really did. "Did you actually just say _broad?_ Correct me if I'm mistaken but the last person to use that word in recallable history was probably Dean Martin during the Rat Pack Vegas years."

The big guy huffed out a laugh without breaking eye contact with me, but his words were directed to the blonde woman behind him. "Smart one. She's smart."

"She is. Too smart for you Creeley, I'd holster my dick if I were you. Something tells me this one would just as soon shoot you as fill out a harassment complaint."

"Who's harassin'? I said she's smart."

"You used the word broad." The woman picked up her ringing phone and hung it up without answering it. "That's offensive these days in the real world."

"Glad we don't live there then."

The conversation seemed to be landlocked between the two of them so I backed out and took a moment to assess my surroundings. Four desks in a small room, all of them touching or uncomfortably close to it; one desk had a microwave sitting on it that appeared to have half of a pizza inside. Music was coming from somewhere, but I couldn't make out the song. It sounded strangely polka-ish. And I could hear the Chief of Police on the other side of the closed door, having what sounded like a real bad morning.

I could relate to that, god could I. And though I had very little memory of what had transpired between myself and the Irish guy in between the last Glenfidditch of the evening and the first cold light of morning, I felt safe in the assumption that I had one up on the Chief in the simple fact that my worst-case scenario at least involved an orgasm.

 _That_ I could remember. Andy's scratchy ginger beard had left what felt like razor burn on the inside of my thighs and my jeans were rubbing uncomfortably against it, but there was a warm sort of flighty lightness in the pit of my stomach that I hadn't enjoyed in a while. A quick flashback to a banging headboard and a tall skinny guy slurping away between my legs while I pulled hard on his hair sent a flush of heat to my neck. I was fidgeting where I stood when movement to my left caught the corner of my eye and yanked me out of my dim memories before I could recall too much.

Thank fuck for that.

If the shabby cretin arguing with the blonde woman across the room from me was big, the thing standing suddenly just east of me was fucking massive.

"Hi."

It was a person, obviously. But it wasn't moving, and if I'd been armed I would have undoubtedly become aware of my right hand inching toward the safety strap on my nonexistent holster. Shame I'd had to surrender it when I'd been decommissioned. The gigantic mountain of a person had a shaved head and tiny little round glasses perched up very close to his eyes, and he was staring at me like he'd never seen a stranger before.

"You have a complaint?" His voice was shockingly soft, but somehow no less threatening for it.

"Uh, no, no I don't. I'm waiting for the Chief."

"Hm." Still staring, unmoving. "You selling cookies?"

"No...I'm the new transfer."

"What new transfer?"

The logging truck started to laugh from the blonde woman's desk. "Kev, jeezus, blink."

Training had taught me to never take my eyes off a suspicious person, so the mountain and I were still locked in something of a deathmatch staredown when finally the door to the left of the blonde woman's desk opened. The timing couldn't have been more perfect, because it was starting to feel like big boy and I were going to throw down and he made at least four of me. Confidence in my abilities was one thing, unmitigated arrogance in the face of an unsmiling mountain was another altogether.

"She says we're expectin' her. You expectin' her Kev?"

"I'm not expecting her."

I turned away from the mountain apparently known as Kev with a sigh of relief to meet the new boss as he filled the doorway of his office - and was greeted with the sight of what might very well have been the most aesthetically pleasing example of maleness I've ever laid eyes on, hands down, no competition, not even fucking close, everybody else go home. Which seemed funny to me, because I'd always thought Hawk was my indisputable ideal with his dark hair and fathomless dark eyes and that off-center rough-hewn baby face of his.

Huh.

The Chief was tall, not as tall as Andy but only a few inches shy of it. Blue eyes hit me so hard I may have gasped and a ridiculously square jaw gave way to a smile that was probably a bit on the terse side behind the surface sheen of a polite smile. Something in the way his flannel shirt sat on his chest and shoulders suggested he'd once been muscled up and heavy, but had either stopped working out or was just getting to that point in middle age when being in shape is more of a suggested average than a hardfast set of numbers.

It all sat really well on him. And the face was pure Men's Vogue.

Goddamn but he was a pretty one.

I forgot my whisker burn and headed for him, hand outstretched, while the logging truck that the blonde woman had called Creeley stuck his leg out to stop me before I could get there.

"Chief, the new transfer's here. From LA. Officer Steelbritches Morality, or somethin'."

"Greta Morley, actually. Sir."

Creeley's eyes lit up at being handed a new verbal toy to play with. "Heh, Greta the great-a."

"Yeah, I've never heard that one before." I pushed past his stupidly thick leg and put my hand out again, and the handsome male in the doorway took it, giving it a shake as he stepped back out of the way to usher me inside and get down to business. Creeley was still smirking from the blonde's desk, swinging his legs like a big disrespectful kid in the presence of the boss.

"She says we're expectin' her."

The Chief's smile never moved, and his eyes never shifted from mine. There was something steely but not the slightest bit cold in them when he said with a voice that felt like warm honey dribbling down my spine, "I'm expecting her."

Creeley made some sort of a disdainful snuffling sound but was already distracted by a fourth man entering the lobby, bundled to the eyeballs in a thick furry-hooded parka and carrying what looked like a box full of moose antlers. "Nobody tells me nothin'."

 _With good reason,_ I suspected. The Chief ignored him and raised a hand to direct me into his office.

"Come in here Officer Morley from LA, lets get you commissioned and on the job."

_**To be continued...** _


	4. Randy Andy and The Chief of Weemeetwa

"So, Chief Davis, before we get into why I'm here let me say first that - "

"Just Chief."

"Excuse me?"

"Chief." He tapped himself on the chest. It seemed to be a local thing. "Just Chief."

"Okay, Chief. I'd like to say that while I'm grateful that you made a space for me on your team, I'm not really sure I'll be here long enough to - "

"A year."

He was sitting there behind his desk, eyes intent on my face, something in between bored disinterest and mild annoyance with maybe just a little bit of amusement mixed in. He was shockingly easy to read and that irritated me. Hawk had always been an impenetrable wall of straightfaced stonewalling that literally anything could have been going on behind and you would never have a clue - that was what I was used to in a superior officer, and oddly enough it had been a comfort knowing that whatever he was feeling, you weren't going to have to hold his hand through it. But not this guy. This guy's face was like one of those overhead projectors from junior high, casting whatever the teacher wrote on it onto the big screen on the wall that people clear in the back could see.

That was a bit disconcerting.

And the fact that he knew enough details to be aware of the duration of my exile made me kind of mad. What business did this big fish in a little pond have with doing his job so efficiently? He was supposed to sign the papers and leave me alone until I was out of his hair again. "Well, that's the official - "

"Or two."

I think the fact that my mouth opened and stayed that way almost made him laugh, but the terse little smile that briefly skittered across his face didn't last as long as my flustered wordlessness. "No, I really don't think - "

One calloused but undeniably well put together hand went up to cut me off before I could get a good head of steam going. "Officer Morley, Division 25 LAPD, do I really need to remind you that you're not in Los Angeles anymore? Somebody made you my responsibility without asking me if I wanted the job but now that you're here, I've got to stretch resources to accommodate you. And that obviously includes my patience." He paused just long enough to hurl his pen at the windowed wall behind me, sending the ill mannered logging truck and Kevin the mountain scattering away from it before bringing his attention back to me. "I've read your paperwork and I'm not going to pretend to know what kind of office politics they've got going out in LA, but I do know one thing. You disobeyed a direct order from your superior officer and bad things happened."

 _Oh shit._ I was going to have to rethink my assumption that I was dealing with an Andy Griffith, despite the fact that Goober Pyle and Barney Fife were sitting right outside the door. This man was sharp and on the ball and he'd done his homework on me already.

There was only one thing I could say.

"Yes Sir."

"And Weemeetwa is the consequence of your actions."

I fidgeted in the hard chair that was suddenly hurting my butt, dragging an unwelcome awareness into my alcohol-battered frontal lobe that I'd definitely done something weird last night. Damn Irish Andy.

"Yes, Sir."

"And while you're here I'm going to be able to depend on you to remember that actions have consequences, am I correct?"

"Absolutely Sir."

"Good, because if you disobey an order from me I'm going to do exactly like your previous superior officer did and make you someone else's problem. Believe it or not, there are places below this on the list." He palmed another pen from the cup on his desk and leaned back, scrubbing a hand through his short gold-ish brown hair as he closed his eyes in an infinite sort of tiredness that almost made me feel bad about making things worse for him. I tried not to stare at him, but he had that whole gorgeous-face thing going on and this show of undeniable authority from what I'd assumed would be an incompetent blowhard was making me feel all off balance. I was so tempted to ask him if he'd been an Outdoor World model that I had to seriously screen my words before I said them. I needed this guy on my side if I wanted to go home. If there was one thing nine years of working my way up inside the LAPD had taught me, it was how to play ball with higher-ups.

_Swallow your pride, get your ass back to LA._

"Yes Sir. I understand completely."

He nodded, staring at a short stack of files on his desk for a few seconds before pulling one out from the bottom. "Now if we're done here - "

"Absolutely Sir," I interrupted, standing up to make a quick exit. The job was what I lived for, the sooner I got back into busy mode the less likely I was to have the psychotic episode I could feel assembling itself inside me...even if doing the job meant foot patrol in the snow that was falling steadily outside the window behind Chief's head. "Put me on the street, I'm ready to go."

He didn't seem to have any interest in keeping me any longer, which was a relief. I don't know what I'd been expecting from him other than maybe evidence that I could write my own ticket and possibly be ruling the roost well before my incarceration was over, but now all that was solidly snatched. The Chief wasn't some soonish-retiree waiting out his last few years on an easy gig so he could spend the rest of his days fishing and sleeping late. I was going to have to rethink my strategy here.

"Why don't you familiarize yourself with station protocol first and get a feel for what we've got on the books." He dropped a file on the outer edge of his desk in front of me and motioned to someone outside the glass partition. "Anything you need, just ask Andy, he's our get-it guy."

"Andy - ?"

If there's ever been a moment in my professional life that made me rethink the whole _Mom was wrong, I'm not the marrying and settling down type, I'm gonna live loud and proud_ thing, it was the handful of seconds between Chief's utterance of that name and the opening of the door. I couldn't bring myself to turn around and look, because whoever was about to come through it would be either my temporary salvation or the harbinger of my doom - and proof that the Chief was right on the whole consequences issue.

I've always had fairly decent luck, but everybody runs low sooner or later.

Apparently it was my turn at the bottom of the barrel.

An embarrassingly familiar head full of long, wild, curly chestnut hair poked in. It was attached to a neck dotted red and purple with suck marks.

Irish Andy.

"Hey boss."

I usually have a better poker face than the one I popped when he looked at me and that broad smile broke wide, crinkling up the corners of his eyes in a way that felt way too damn intimate in its hazy-headed familiarity. I felt my soul make a panicked exit through the soles of my shoes while my sore ass flinched in recognition.

"THAT guy?!"

Chief had sat back in his chair again and pointed from me to the source of my horror and back again. Nobody in this town seemed capable of saying someone's name without hand gestures.

"Officer Morley, Andy. Andy, Officer Morley."

"Yeah we've met." Andy gave me a little wave and more of that impishly sexy broadfaced grin, the same one from the previous night - the one that had landed me in his bed - and I felt my face heating up. The door closed behind him as he ducked back out and Chief, blessedly, didn't seem to have noticed the discomfort billowing off me in what I'm sure was neon waves.

"Once you get past the confused head tilt he's pretty capable."

 _"That_ guy is your gopher?"

"Don't let him smoke in the car, it makes the dog sick."

It felt like the part of my brain responsible for holding valid conversations was coming down with a case of whiplash and all I could do was blink in confusion at the random introduction of the dog into the scenario. "The dog?"

“We have a dog.”

“A dog.”

“Yep.” Chief was signing something, obviously already having dismissed me in his own head. But I wasn't quite so ready to step out that door as I had been just a brief minute ago, knowing that my ill-advised fuck buddy was on the other side of it somewhere. Of all the places he could work...geezus. And I needed to stall for time, because if I walked through that door before Irish Andy was far away from Creeley the logging truck, I was never going to survive the humiliation of the big asshole putting two and two together.

Assuming he could count that high.

I could see Andy outside the office window, talking to the blonde woman.

“So, what does the dog do?”

"Hm?" Chief didn't look up, just kept filling out papers that I assumed had something to do with me. "Just dog stuff."

“Is he a drug sniffer?”

“Oh hell no, he’d be following Andy around all day. Barks at him all the time as it is."

I'm sure it seemed odd that I apparently couldn't let go of the subject of the damn dog, but Chief didn't appear to be the least bit interested in my continued presence in his office and started flipping pages, muttering to himself in what sounded like sloppy French before he finally noticed I hadn't left yet. He looked up at me and raised a brow, waiting.

"You need something?"

Andy was still outside the window. He and Creeley were laughing about something. _Shit._

"It's a...a department dog?"

"Yeah."

"What's its name?"

Chief put his pen down and leaned far back in his chair. The springs in the seat made a little _sproing_ sound as he stared at me, those intense blue eyes narrowing to look past my head toward the window. "Hobo. Where do you know Andy from?"

"What?"

"He said you've met."

"Oh, um...yeah, he was in the bar last night where I - you know." I shrugged, but he just sat there staring through my skull, unblinking. "Having a drink. Like you do in bars."

The little hitch to his lips said it all. He knew something was up.

"How's your transportation?"

Conversational whiplash again. It seemed to be his method. "It's good. Good - no problems. Backfires a little but it seems every vehicle in this town does, must be how they say hello to each other."

His head was resting on his fist now on the arm of his chair, that icy hot stare turning more amused every time I stammered out another bit of nonsense. He was obviously getting a kick out of my discomfort, but to his immense credit he wasn't running me out of his office just yet. I could still see Andy out of the corner of my eye, gesturing wildly in accompaniment to an apparently amusing anecdote while the blonde woman shook her head.

I cleared my throat and prepared to find out just how long I could keep stalling before Chief called me on my bullshit and sent me out on my second walk of shame for the morning.

"So the dog, does he live with you? I mean, if he doesn't have an assigned officer I'd be happy to take a turn housing him, I mean - if my landlord allows animals, I guess I should ask first shouldn't I? I don't even really know who my landlord is to be honest, the key was in the mailbox when I got here." I stopped talking long enough to take a breath and let the mortification set in good and proper. I sounded like a fucking idiot and Chief was still staring at me. There wasn't a single thing in his expression that gave me the slightest impression he wasn't just letting me talk for his own amusement, neither confused nor bemused by my scattered line of questioning - he was simply waiting for me to shut up and leave his office. And he was obviously not terribly impressed. “You’re gonna let me keep rambling, aren’t you.”

“I am enjoying that pained look on your face.”

_One year, Morley. One fucking year._

I saw Andy move away from the window and disappear down a corridor.

"Okay, we'll sort the dog thing later. I'm gonna...go familiarize myself with station protocol and get a feel for what you've got on the books."

"It would be great if you would."

I got up and headed for the door a little too quickly, nearly dropping the file he'd given me and agonizing over how stupid I'd just made myself look in front of the one person I needed to impress. I wanted to lay down somewhere dark and die quietly until the pounding behind my eyes let up and the shakiness in my hands settled, or at the very least until I sweated out what was left of the Glenfidditch that was still cycling through my liver. Chief's eyes were still on me, I could feel them as I reached for the doorknob and was suddenly stopped in my tracks by the dark honey sound of his voice pouring over me.

"Oh I'm your landlord, by the way."

The logging truck - Creeley - watched me walk out of the Chief's office with a smug look on his stupid face. I didn't know what he found so amusing, but I sincerely hoped it didn't have anything to do with Andy and I knowing each other - biblical sense or otherwise. I tried not to make eye contact and instead beelined to the desk that had been home to the half eaten breakfast burrito. The person now sitting there was chewing the final bite of it while he shuffled papers and bounced a little in his chair to the polka music coming from...wherever. I couldn't see a radio anywhere. He looked up at me and smiled politely as I pulled a chair from the last empty desk over in front of him.

"Hi, I'm Officer Morley - "

"From LA." He wiped one hand on his pants and held it out to me across the desk. "Detective Cade, Homicide."

"Homicide, wow. You guys have a homicide department. I wouldn't have expected that."

"Ehh, I don't see a lot of action in my assigned capacity. There hasn't been a malicious death in this town since 1965." He motioned toward the other side of the room and took a swig from an old red tartan print Thermos straight out of 1952. "I resist the urge to murder Creeley every morning just to give myself something to do."

Something slammed from behind me and Creeley bellowed "Any time Cade, bring it when you're ready you Captain America lookin' fuck."

Detective Cade shot a finger up without even looking.

"Nice, good to see a good camaraderie in the workplace, that's always uplifting." I looked up and saw the Irish guy going down the hallway on the other side of the glass divider wall, staring down at a stack of files in his hands. "If you'll point me to where I'm stationed, I'll just go get busy on my...stuff...the Chief gave me." I held up the file and waited, trying to keep Andy in my sights without looking like I was watching him. Cade pointed to the desk with the microwave on it.

"Have at it."

As confused as I was by the strange appliance placement, there was just one thing on my mind as I claimed the empty desk with my lone file folder - getting hold of Irish guy before he talked to anyone else, and making sure my name never crossed his lips in anything other than a professional workplace capacity. Because I would be damned before I'd submit myself to the bullshit I had no doubt these backwoods yokels would start ladeling out the second they realized one of their own had seen me naked.

**_To be continued..._ **


	5. Saints and Fools

"Hey no swearing on our Christian server."

The mountain - Kevin - was shooting Creeley what I assumed was his version of a scolding look, though to the unschooled eye it looked a lot like just a giant man staring blankly at another giant man. Creeley glanced at him for a second and then downshifted to a less verbal format, returning Detective Cade's proffered finger with both hands while I took the opportunity to slip off down the hall. Irish Andy was moving files from a box to a single filing cabinet and my current goal in life was to do little more than catch him and put the fear of god in him. Or the fear of Greta Morley, which was indisputably worse.

Sorting my fast track back to LA could wait a few minutes.

I stepped into the corridor in front of him and he looked up, a quick and ridiculously broad smile crossing his entire face when he saw me. His mouth opened and I knew I had to get first words in before he said anything, because he had a disarmingly innocent sort of charm to him that was beginning to worry me. I didn't have time to like anyone in this place and I could feel it just creeping up on me.

“You didn't tell me you work here!”

"You didn't ask."

I stood there staring at him for a long minute, exasperated and not sure how to handle the situation. I had successfully managed to both sleep with and work with Hawk off and on for nearly five years, but that was in a huge department where nobody noticed anything but their own business and between two very professional people who knew how to keep it aboveboard on the clock. I wasn't sure Andy knew how to tie his own shoes.

But looking at him in the soft morning sunlight teasing in through the outer hallway window, I realized one thing that the previous evening's level ten inebriation had managed to keep hidden from my whiskey soused vision. Andy was puppydog cute like the geeky younger brother in a family full of infinitely less awkward siblings, taller than humanly possible, and had really beautiful hair that I definitely remembered tugging like the reins on a horse at some point during our boozy slumber party. And his eyes were green. Big and green and deep set and friendly and _nice,_ and as all this unwelcome information filed itself into the appropriate categories in my head I realized there was absolutely no reason to even try to dislike this guy. We were both consenting adults, we'd had a lot to drink, and my stomach still felt nice and fluttery in the aftermath of whatever went down between us. It was almost enough to override the throbbing headache.

And he wasn't trying to touch me or otherwise invade my space in any way. In fact, of the two of us, he was the only one acting like a professional who hadn't just boned his co-worker.

_Where do you work?_

_The station._

_Give me a lift, I'll show you. That's where I'm going._

He hadn't known, same as me...and here I was acting like he'd sabotaged my first day at work on purpose.

I gave in to that awkward puppy charm he was oozing out of every cute pore simply because there was nothing else to do. "You're a mutant leprechaun, aren't you."

He just kept smiling, obviously used to hearing endless observations on his size and accent combo, and then he seemed to suddenly remember something important. "Oh, I have your - wait a sec." He stuffed one big hand into a pocket on his battered brown leather jacket and pulled out a wisp of pink. My underwear. "Forgot to give them back this morning, didn't realize I still had 'em until I got here."

I snatched them out of his hand and shoved them into my back pocket, looking around nervously for observant eyes. The last thing in the world I needed was that Creeley guy spotting me and the department gopher giving each other our undies back, though even that was decidedly less mortifying than someone seeing him with them tied around his wrist. I stepped around him until I had him backed up against the glass divider and dropped my voice to rule out being overheard, because if there was one thing I knew about working in a police station, it's that there are eyes and ears _everywhere_. My foray into drunken bondage wasn't going to be up for community consumption if I could do anything about it.

“Okay listen Christian Grey, if you and I are going to work together we’re going to have some ground rules. Rule number one is that I don’t care how hard they turn the thumbscrews, you never _ever_ tell anyone that I slept with you. We clear?”

He nodded, eyebrows up, not the least bit intimidated by what I was trying to pass off as an authoritative order with threatening undertones. It usually worked regardless of the size of the target audience, but this guy was starting to strike me as fearless and maybe a little bit sweetly stupid. I'd never considered myself even remotely morosexual, but the more this guy smiled at me and nodded agreeably the less angry I was feeling about having slept with him. And if that wasn't all kinds of disturbing to my normally sapio-attracted self, I don't know what would be.

“What’s rule number two?”

“There is no rule number two, rule number one is enough.”

"Yeah okay." The look on his face was something halfway between befuddled and amused, and it was starting to endear him to me too quickly for me to process what was happening. He dropped a file randomly into the cabinet without looking and kicked the empty box into the corner. “Can I get a lift? Chief needs me to run him an errand.”

The subject had changed so fast it left me momentarily confused, and I wondered for a second if he was related to the Chief or if this was just another local trait everybody seemed to share. “Aren’t you the office gopher?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have a car?”

“I have a car, what I don’t have is a license.”

The conversational whiplash thing definitely seemed to be at the very least a station trait. “You’re the errand boy but you don’t have a license - ?”

“Correct.”

He didn't even have the courtesy to look sheepish and I was starting to internally debate whether or not we were actually discussing the same subject, but honestly I didn't want to stay in the corridor with him for too long; through the glass I could see Creeley and Cade flipping each other off as they went about their paperwork, and the way my luck was running short lately I knew it would only be a matter of time before one of them looked up and saw us. In the interest of moving things along I stepped away from Andy and dropped the authoritative tone that wasn't working on him anyway. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why don’t you have a license?”

“Suspended.”

“For what?”

“Drug charge.”

Whip. Lash.

“You realize you work for the _police,_ right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yet you’re in the employ of the police department with a suspended license for a drug charge, in the capacity of errand boy, which by its very definition requires you to go places for them, which by _its_ very definition includes driving.” 

“Right.”

It was starting to feel like I was going to be having this conversation for the rest of my life, but something sadistic in me wouldn't let me stop. “The cops in here, the ones you work for, they know you have a suspended license and a drug charge?”

“Cade over there’s the one arrested me.”

“And the Chief?”

“Booked me personally. My truck is in impound out back. That's where I went when we got here, I forgot I left something in the glove compartment.” He dug around in his other pocket, the one that hadn't been housing my underwear, and fished out a little smushed up bag of something highly suspicious.

“The best part of this joke is that you’re serious, aren’t you? You’re not even making this shit up. Why do they keep you?” He shrugged and I cut him off before he could answer, because I had a sneaking suspicion the words that were about to come out of his mouth were just going to verify my new residence in the twilight zone. "Don't say it's because you grow the best local because I don't want to have to arrest the entire department."

“Okay."

"Okay?"

"I won't say it."

I think I might have been just standing there staring at him in awe, caught between a grating irritation and a begrudging admiration for his seemingly endless ability to verbally lead me in aimless circles when a door slammed behind me.

"GOOD morning pickle jar."

I wasn't going to look, but Andy's eyes had darted past my face to the glass partition behind me and whatever attention he'd been willing to give me up till that moment was instantly gone. Behind me in the main lobby a burly lumberjack looking guy had just kicked the door open and announced his presence in a booming voice heavy with an accent I couldn't place. It was like a harder, heavier, more rough-edged version of the inflection in Chief's voice, which I hadn't bothered to analyze yet; something about dogs and drug dealers and mountains that talked had kept my head from latching onto anything more detailed than the microwave on my new desk and the fact that the Chief's eyes were bluer than anyone's eyes should be.

"Sinjin's back." Andy was smiling happily, but since that seemed to be his default I didn't really equate it with the new arrival. That was when Chief stepped out of his office and slapped his hands together with a resounding clap.

"Okay listen up, we got a Code Red."

The whole place went up in groans and I, stupidly, did the unforgivable - I had followed Andy back into the main room and opened my mouth and god forgive me, I _spoke_ \- which put the attention of the entire room squarely on me. “What's a Code Red?”

Everyone in the station turned around to look at me. One or two random people may have sniggered. And the Chief nodded like I'd just volunteered and it was the best thing that had happened to him all morning.

“Morley, you take it.”

"Got it."

In my excitement over being assigned the first enigmatically exciting-sounding Code Red of the day, I'd neglected so many hardfast facts that I was grabbing my coat from the back of my new chair before I even realized I didn't have instructions, a squad car, a partner, or a sidearm.

I didn't even have a badge.

"Is someone going to tell me what a Code Red is and where I'm supposed to go to take care of it?"

Chief was leaning against the doorway to his office, just watching me with his arms crossed over his chest and that same amused look on his face that I'd already seen way too much of. Something shiny and gold was in his hand. My badge. A different size and a different shape from the one I'd worn for the better part of a decade, but it would do.

Anything so long as I was back on the job.

"It's a llama."

"A...excuse me a what? A _llama?"_

"Yep." He tossed the badge onto my desk from across the room and I watched it land with a thud.

"What's the llama doing and why does it involve us?"

 _"You."_ He pointed at me as he turned to go back into his office. "It involves _you_."

Cade spoke up from behind his plaid Thermos and I noticed that his shirt matched it. So did Creeley's, mostly. In fact everyone's shirt matched it except mine, and it was official now - I was in lumberjack hell and my plain black tee shirt didn't meet the Paul Bunyan dress code by a sorry mile.

"Code Red means one of Red Hanrahan's livestock has released itself on its own recognizance - again - and we as the good public servants we are, we send out one of Weemeetwa's finest to round it up and take it home."

"Okay, so...how do we do that and _why,_ exactly? Aren't there more important things for us to be doing?"

Chief spoke up again and the tone of his voice made it clear he was already done with me, bored with the conversation, and ready to move along without more of my mouth slowing things down. "This isn't LA, Morley. Figure it out, you city folks are good at that sort of thing aren't you?" He wiggled his fingers around next to his head in a gesture indicative of absolutely nothing and turned to go back into his office. "It's time to clock in."

This felt horribly like an inside joke at the expense of the new arrival - unfortunately, me - and I wasn't ready to go down without a struggle. “Don't you have an animal control department? I don't know how to catch a llama, I'm not even completely sure what a llama is. And I don't have a car assigned yet, by the way.”

Creeley took a break from flipping Cade off and tilted his head at me, all annoyingly smug and obviously overjoyed at seeing me continue my protest even though the Chief had walked away. "Herbivore. Related to the camel. Native to the Andes mountains."

"What's one doing in - " I struggled to remember the name of this ridiculous place, but drew a solid blank until the new guy paused from pouring Jack Daniels into his coffee cup and helped me out with a condescending smile that wasn't anywhere near as irritating as Creeley's. It was every bit as cheaply amused, though.

"Weemeetwa."

"Thank you. Why is it in Wee...whatever?"

"Red Hanrahan. We don't ask what he does with 'em, we just chase 'em down when they get loose. Old man's got a passel of the fuckers." 

"A _passel?_ What the hell is a passel and again I ask _why me??"_

Chief stepped back into the room and whistled at the guy. Sinjin, Andy had called him. I didn't have the slightest clue what the hell kind of name that was but he looked just like the rest of them - scruffy, big, dressed like a serial killer, shitty manners - though he wasn't as tall as everyone else and tattoos peeked out of every place where clothing stopped and skin became visible. He looked every inch like what we called in Los Angeles a bar buster, the guys who regularly got hauled in too drunk to stand up at the end of every Saturday night after breaking up as many places as they could before the cops caught up. The entire station knew them by name. They never went down without a skullbusting fight and always, _always_ took as many innocent bystanders with them as they could before sleeping it off in the drunk tank till late Sunday afternoon. “Because you’re the only one here on probationary status and bad little girls get to deal with llamas." Chief waved dismissively at me and turned to head back into his office with Sinjin behind him. "Go.”

I couldn't begin to outline all the ways that one sentence rubbed me wrong. And the fact that I couldn't decide if I was more pissed off or turned on by the words _bad little girls_ coming from the Chief's mouth was a grandstanding testament to the stupidity that had taken root in my psyche ever since my arrival in this bastion of unbridled idiocy.

The Irish guy might have been my first big mistake, but I could feel it in my bones that he wasn't going to be my last.

Sinjin stopped and turned to look at me like he'd just noticed me, despite the fact that we'd just had a conversation of sorts. "Hey wait a sec. _You're_ the new transfer?"

_To be continued..._


	6. Pearls Before Swine

I didn't even have time to nod in affirmation that yes, I was indeed the new transfer before the stupidity that seemed native to this particular square footage kicked right back in. The righteous indignation all over Creeley's face was palpable and he reached out to stop Sinjin before he stepped into Chief's office. "Saint, were you expectin' her?"

The tattooed guy was fighting back a broad grin, I could see it from clear across the room where I was still standing in a sort of paralyzed confusion concerning what exactly I was supposed to be doing about the llama. "Yeah I was expectin' her, weren't you?"

"Naw, I wasn't expectin' her."

Saint...Sinjin...whoever he was, bless his heart he tucked that slow grin away and leaned into the office where Chief had disappeared; it was obvious by his tone that he was humoring the big thug in a way that only a top-rung totempoler could do and I realized he must be second in command here. "Tommy, Cree says he wasn't expectin' her."

Kevin stopped at the mouth of the hallway and peered in at us to add his nickel's worth. "I wasn't expecting her either."

"Tommy, Kev says he wasn't expectin' her either."

"Nobody asked me if I was expecting her."

It was the blonde woman, the only person present who seemed to actually be working. She chimed in with a bored tone that sort of summed up what I could only assume was a typical on the job experience for her and I felt my fellow-female support instincts fire up on all cylinders. She was quietly attractive in that tired, exasperated sort of way that women who've worked around men for a long time often are...soft and feminine in the face, hard and sharp in the soul, patient and tolerant until you hit the right button and then it's off to the races. There was zero warning in her expression when Sinjin cracked a huge smile and leaned over her desk to ruffle her hair - and was immediately foiled by her grabbing his thumb and bending it backward hard enough to drive his shoulder into the desktop. He laughed approvingly as he righted himself, seemingly satisfied that he'd hit the right button. "Because you're an _angel_ Sarah Pearl and I love you."

"You wish, Saint John."

Creeley turned on her accusingly. "Were you expectin' her?"

She nodded and went back to texting on her phone, bored with the boys and the misbehavior she'd obviously seen far too much of already today. "Yes I was expecting her."

"Why was everybody expectin' her except me and Kev?"

"I was expecting her too."

Every head turned to look at Cade, sitting back with his feet up on his desk and that ever present Thermos in his hand. Creeley rolled his eyes dismissively. "Isn't Hydra expectin' your ass home soon? And yeah I sorta expected that." He took a quick spin around, glaring around the room from person to person until his eyes fell to the tall Irish guy moving the microwave from my desk to what looked like a rickety 1970's era TV tray in the corner. "Numbnuts, were you expecting her?"

"Huh?"

Everything in me clenched up; Mister Attention Deficit could end it all for me right here, right now, and I could feel it coming - right up to the moment Chief reappeared at his doorway and whistled so loud I jumped damn near out of my skin.

"If you're finished playing Who's On Fucking First, we got business to tend to. Saint get Officer Morley the keys to Three."

"Two's the only unit runnin' Chief."

Chief looked like someone had just scattered his Legos. "What happened to Three?"

"Pascal ran his snowcat into it. Punctured the radiator."

A familiar longsuffering sigh of the greatly put-upon huffed out of his mouth, and just as the words _that poor man_ were forming in my head, he shook it off and turned to retreat back to the relative safety of his office. "Okay then give her Two."

"You're killin' me Chief, why you gotta give the new chick my ride?"

My head whipped up so fast a nerve pinched in my neck and I made a little squeaking sound - whether it was pain or indignation I couldn't tell you but god help me, I've never wanted to use the butt end of a service revolver on a skull so bad in my entire career in law enforcement. First Creeley had called me a broad, Chief used the term _bad little girls,_ and now this Sinjin/Saint person was referring to me as a chick; I looked at the blonde woman but she was just sitting there, chin resting on her hand, shaking her head at me slowly. _It's not worth it_ was all over her face. _Just hang in there till they run out of steam, they're men, it won't take long_.

Chief was still arguing with Saint - Sinjin, whoever - and it was a lot like watching a whiny teenager argue with a frustrated but dangerously calm parent. "Because you're still drunk from last night and you've got paperwork. Give her the keys and then get your ass in here, I need your report." Saint started to protest again but Chief put a finger up and everything screeched to a halt. I knew what I was looking at.

The finger of authority.

I also knew it would provide me a moment of silence and an open door to jump through, because unless that finger was attached to Hawk's hand, I was no respecter of it. And there was no way in hell I was going to spend my first morning on the job chasing some damn camel around town in the snow.

"Excuse me but I don't know my way around regardless of which unit I'm driving. I just got here yesterday, remember? I don't even know where the ladies room is yet."

"Ladies room?" Creeley hitched an eyebrow and started to laugh. "Honey there's one shitter in this place and it's guarded by a hellhound, you're better off trottin' over to the taxidermist and payin' him a dime to use his."

Andy yelped from behind me before I could launch into the tirade I had on deck over the _honey_ thing and stumbled past me, slapping the front of his blue jeans. There were scorch marks on his thighs and the microwave was snapping and popping until Cade swung a leg over and kicked the plug out of the wall. An acrid smell of burning wires wafted through the room, but everyone just kept going on about their business like exploding kitchen appliances were standard procedure. From the looks of the place it was entirely likely.

And then Andy spoke, waving a big hand around in the air to clear the smoke. "She really doesn't know her way around. She doesn't even know where she lives."

I cringed so hard my spine seized up. I knew he was trying to help my case but as every eye in the house found its way to my face I knew this was finally it. The end, the apocalypse, the chapter that would be read over and over no matter how many times I tried to close the book. I was standing in a room full of bozos just waiting for something interesting to happen, and goddamnit if the well meaning pot head I'd banged twelve ways to Sunday hadn't just handed it to them in a flash of electrical fire. He was going to start yammering and somebody was going to figure out that we arrived at the same time and start asking questions about why, and I was going to have no choice but to stand there looking like the town bicycle while Andy spilled the details about how he ended up riding to work with me.

These doofuses would never let me live it down. That was a given.

_One damn year._

In the end it was Chief who saved me. Though the word _saved_ could be considered a stretch in light of the next words out of his mouth.

"Take Andy and get my coffee on your way back."

Oh...oh god _no._ My head went on autopilot and scrambled for something, _anything,_ to get me out of this. The more we were seen together the more likely the math would start to add up and the more opportunities he would have to make a fatal error. I needed to put distance between us and keep it that way.

In the panic of imminent exposure, I latched onto the first thing that hit me - the poor guy's baby face.

"Andy?? Andy is a fetus, I'm not taking him out on a call."

Andy looked up in confusion from the smoking microwave. "I'm a what?"

I pointed at him indignantly, ready to throw him under the bus to avert the look Creeley was giving me. Andy was obviously the youngest person in the room and it seemed a valid point to use to avoid being partnered with him - that plus the simple fact that he wasn't an officer to the best of my knowledge and the not so simple fact that I knew what he looked like without his pants on. I decided my best bet was to stick with the age thing and deflect from that last bit as vehemently as possible. "Look at him, he's barely out of embryo stage."

The look on his face was more confusion than betrayal. "I'm twenty six."

"You are not, your birthday's not till March."

Every head turned from me to Creeley. He looked around, scowling hard. "What? I have a head for dates."

"When's my birthday Cree?" Cade was giggling, rocking back in his chair with his Thermos cup, no doubt ready to dig in and taunt the big jackass till hands got thrown...which was an ideal scenario for me, since I could shove Andy out of the room during the mayhem and redirect the conversation any direction I wanted. I silently begged Cade to keep it up and was blessed with his cooperation. "Am I a Virgo? No wait - Capricorn, right? Hey can you remind me a week before my anniversary so I can make dinner reservations in time?"

"Shut up dipshit. As a matter of fuckin' fact I organize the town events calendar for the ladies at the library, I bet you information-withholding assholes didn’t know that did ya."

Saint started laughing. "You don't even have a library card."

"And how would you know that, mister nepotism gone wild?"

"Because _my brother told me,_ sorta like how he told me about the new transfer that _he didn’t tell you about."_

So much was happening all at once that I just stood there, off to one side with Andy, watching and wondering if this was how it was going to be for the next year - nervously hanging out with a guy the locals referred to as Shag And Bag Burns while I waited patiently for the infighting to subside enough for someone, anyone, to give me something to do. But it was suiting my purpose for the moment, so I stood my ground and just waited it out with a gleeful sort of self satisfaction that the attention was no longer on me and Andy.

And then what Saint had said sank into my slightly spinny head and I realized why he and Chief had the same sort of unplaceable accent. I slapped Andy on the arm and was struck again by how freaking tall he was when he bent nearly double to hear me over the loud voices that were getting progressively louder. Somebody was saying something lewd about the library ladies and Creeley's anger meter was hitting critical. "Saint and Chief are brothers?"

Andy nodded.

"Where are they from?"

"Moosejaw."

"Moo - what??"

He didn't answer; the verbal throwdown was at full steam and he just walked over to Saint, reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a bundle of keys, and walked back over to me without anyone noticing him. I stared at him in astonishment as he handed me the keys.

"You're a pickpocket too?"

"Misspent youth." He put his hand above his head to indicate his height. "And nobody really sees me because of the monster effect."

"What the hell is the monster effect?"

"Human brains choose not to see stuff outside the limits of what's likely. I'm too tall so your brain says 'not real' and ignores me."

Huh. I was going to have to rethink this guy's intelligence - either that or arrest him for coming to work stoned, because that was some weed-level thinking. "Now I know why they keep you in here. You'd be an absolute menace on the streets."

He grinned and my heart clutched up just a little. It had nothing to do with the previous night - I still couldn't recall enough of our nocturnal escapades to feel one way or the other about that, but there was something insidiously sweet about this particular monster that I couldn't bring myself to shut out. Andy and I were going to be friends, I could feel it in my gut. And amazingly, it didn't seem like such an awful thing.

I tried not to think about that nasty tendency I had to end up killing my friends.

"I hate all you motherhumpers. Every friggin’ last one of you. _You_ especially." Creeley was still on his rampage about birthdays and library ladies and had spun around to shove a thick finger out toward Cade again. Cade threw his hands out in a _What??_ gesture and feigned surprise as Andy and I quietly headed for the door. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Chief watching us, but he wasn't stopping our retreat and I psychically begged Cade and Cree to keep fighting. Which they, of course, happily obliged.

 **"** What did I do??"

 **"** Sittin’ over there bein’ all pretty and shit. By the way some dude called this morning, says he wants his metal arm back. I don’t even wanna know what you kinky bastards get up to at those city council meetings but goddamn could you at least keep it away from the workplace? I’m tryin’ to operate in a complete information void here and you’re gummin’ up the works."

"I refuse to be kinkshamed by a guy known as moosefucker to everyone in the adjoining three counties."

Kevin interrupted the melee with an announcement from the hallway; he had wandered out and back in at least twice and his oddly soft but earthshaking voice cut through the noise, sending the room into a sudden silence as all mouths slammed shut and all heads turned to look at him.

"Two more calls on the llama. Argus McShane says it's in his back yard and he's gonna shoot it."

"Oh Christ." Chief pushed away from his doorway and pointed at me and Andy. "You're wasting time, Morley. Trust me when I say those fuckers are fast, you're just making it harder on yourself hanging around here."

"What? We were leaving." I motioned toward Andy, who was already pulling on his coat and hat. "You know where Argus McShane lives?"

"Yup."

"We're out, then."

"Quick little assholes," Creeley cut in as I grabbed my own woefully inadequate coat and started for the exit with Saint's pilfered keys in my hand. "And they spit. Not just saliva man, they hurl loogies at your head." He straightened his back as he stood up from the blonde woman's desk, stretching up to full height while making the most godawful snorting sound.

"Geezus Cree, if you spit that in here I'm going to file another OSHA report on you."

"You love it Pearly. It's manly." The big idiot cleared his throat and snorted disgustingly a few more times while the rest of the room had a communal gag reaction and shuffled off back to their various duties.

Idiots, the lot of them.

Except the blonde lady. Pearl...her I liked.

_To be continued..._


	7. Ojibwe For The Win

“So what did you do in LA Division 25?”

“HSPT." I was pretty aggravated still about the llama and not in the mood to elaborate further, but Andy was staring at me with all the great expectation of an overgrown Oliver Twist hoping for more - and after several long seconds of silence I gave in. "High Speed Pursuit Team.”

"Cool, so you got to drive one of those souped up cruisers?" He was smiling so big his face was nearly splitting in two, and the residual irritation at being sent on a fool's errand started to ease off as I went to unlock the car and found it sitting open. Of course. The only person in this town likely to steal a police car was standing on the other side of the vehicle from me.

"Look, Andy, you're obviously a really sweet guy, but I'm not particularly hyped about us working together. I think you know why." He looked mildly confused but I didn't feel like rehashing our not too distant past. "I'm willing to make an honest go of it for professional purposes so long as you behave. I don't remember a lot of whatever went on between us but I'm really _really_ hoping you'll be discreet and not mouth it around." I cringed at how narrowly I'd dodged the Creeley bullet. That was an uncomfortable close call I wasn't looking forward to revisiting any time soon, though I knew in all likeliness it was bound to happen sooner or later.

The later the better.

"I wouldn't do that."

"Good, because - "

"I don't remember any of it, I've got nothing to tell anybody even if they ask."

I stared at him over the top of the car. There was zero deceit in his expression and I doubted he'd have been able to hide it anyway. "You honestly don't remember any of it?"

"Nope."

"Nothing at all?"

He shook his head. I didn't know if I should be relieved and grateful or disappointed and offended, but I figured if anything it was a stroke of luck, and I hadn't had so many of those lately that I could afford to overlook one when it was handed to me. "Get in the car and put your seatbelt on."

The llama was no longer in Argus McShane's back yard when we got there. But the day's allotment of sleety snow had arrived and my mood was declining rapidly as we trudged from back yard to back yard, climbing over fences and listening to complaints from people who obviously didn't trust outsiders. Hardly anyone would speak directly to me; a quick suspicious once-over and then they would turn their attention to Andy as if I wasn't there. I didn't know if it was because I was female or because of the color of my skin - or possibly both - but by the time we got back to the car I was so pissy I seriously considered just dropping Andy off at a gas station and driving back to LA in the squad car.

I doubted it would make it that far, though.

"Why are you guys driving around in twenty year old sedans?"

"A bit of a step down, huh?"

That was an understatement. The cars I was used to weren't even in the same transportational category as the ancient Taurus I was currently sitting in, and it was highly likely Andy did the maintenance on it and whatever else they had parked at the station - though I figured _don't ask don't tell_ might be the best option where that was concerned. Still, there was a big engine sitting under the hood in front of me, and I knew cars were tuned differently for higher elevations and colder weather. Couldn't hurt to see what kind of speed it was capable of.

I looked over at Andy. 

"You like to go fast, little boy?"

"Not really, no."

"Aw come on, you're a guy. Guys like speed, don't they?"

"Not the car kind."

"Don't make me arrest you before we find the damn llama, cutiepie. I'm not wrestling it into the back seat on my own." I was just about to ask _What are we supposed to do with it anyway?_ when something big and hairy charged across the road in front of us, narrowly missing the grill of the car. "What the fuck is that?!"

"Oh it's Elsie! Take a right."

I couldn't see any road to the right but he was yelling "Right! Right!" - so I hit a hard turn and floored it straight through an alley between two buildings. I'd wanted to see how fast the car could go, but down a blind-opening corridor that wasn't meant for vehicular access? Not ideal. I couldn't see the llama anymore and sleet was starting to ice up the windshield faster than the defroster could melt it off, but we were getting up some decent RPMs due to the long straight lay of the alley, and that familiar old spiky euphoria was beginning to amp up in my nervous system. It'd been a while since I'd felt it and damn if the endorphins didn't come out to welcome it back. I may or may not have been hooting a little bit as the speedometer edged up on a respectable set of numbers and Andy, bless his weak heart, reached across to grab the front of my coat.

"Geezus slow down! You gotta turn in a second - "

Before he even finished his sentence the alley ended abruptly ahead...and so did the street it emptied into. In front of us sat a prim looking little Victorian house, staring us down as we barreled toward it. I wasn't about to hit the brakes and send us fishtailing into the side of one of the stout brick buildings on either side of us, but I also didn't know which direction the alley emptied onto the adjoining cross road and it was a bit late to Google a street map.

"TURN!! TURN!! GEEZUS CHRIST!!"

"Which way?"

_"LEFT!! LEFT!!"_

I don't know what I was expecting with all the snow and rain and pure sno-cone grade slush coming out of the sky to pile dangerously all over the ground in what had to have been rapidly dropping sub zero temperatures, but at least my training had somewhat prepared me for it. I'd been tested in heavy rain, on standing water, on gravel and heat-slicked asphalt and loose sand, but upper Midwest weather wasn't something the academy's driving courses had bothered trying to replicate in great detail. A little ice, yes - it wasn't entirely unheard of in California, though it wasn't likely I would ever actually encounter any in my lifetime short of driving up into the mountains.

But this wasice and snow and sleet and slush, none of which I had a single second of practical on the job experience with.

Fortunately I've always been a very adaptive person.

When the tires hit the ice on the open road it wasn’t but a handful of seconds before the vehicle was in a graceful broadslide, the tail end of the car coming around in a smooth sort of slow motion while the treads sent freshly shaved sheets of hardened snow exploding against the windows. And Andy was trying his best to get all eighty seven feet worth of his legs up enough to launch himself into the back seat while I cackled. This was child’s play.

“I told you to put your seatbelt on didn’t I, dipshit.”

I suppose venting my frustrations behind the wheel with an uninitiated innocent in the passenger seat wasn't the best idea I'd had in ages, but it felt good. There wasn't a single moment when I wasn't in control of the vehicle, but I'm sure to Andy it felt like we were going to die at some point. We were still sliding at full speed, the impetus of the car’s RPMs not even trying to decelerate now that the resistance on the treads was pretty much zero, but despite the fact that I’d never seen road ice this slick and was pretty much winging it I felt nothing but elation. It had been a while since I'd gone more than a handful of miles over the speed limit. And the old Ford, unwieldy as it was, wasn’t exactly a prime vehicle for this sort of stunt. 

“Goddamn this thing handles like a pig doesn’t it?”

Andy was half in the passenger seat and half in the back, cursing in ancient Celtic or whatever, scrambling for the safety harness that was laying in the floorboard. How he thought he was going to get it installed and adjusted and strapped onto his body before we came out of our freeslide was a mystery for the ages, but once I’d done a series of corrections that brought the car back into a somewhat controlled alignment on the road, he’d finally managed to get all his limbs into the back seat.

I looked at him in the rear view mirror.

“Pussy.”

"I'm a civilian!! You gotta let me get out."

"Shut up, I'm deputizing you."

"Please don't." 

_"Unit Three do you copy."_

I looked down. The radio was such an old backwoods model that I'd assumed they'd just never bothered to remove it and dispose of it, but Kevin's deep monotone was coming through it loud and clear. Andy reached over the back of the seat and grabbed the receiver. "Jesus Christ Kev get me out of this car!"

_“Hey, no swearing on our christian server.”_

“I’m not swearing, I’m praying.”

_"What's your position?"_

"I'm in the back seat."

_"I mean your location, what's your location numbnuts."_

"Oh." He looked around, but his window was covered in ice spray and he couldn't see out enough to tell where we were. "I dunno, we're in pursuit of Hanrahan's fucking llama. It's Elsie this time."

"Give me that." I snatched the receiver out of his hand and clicked the relay button. "Dispatch, we're currently eastbound on - hell I dunno, there doesn't seem to be a street sign anywhere in this goddamn town. We just passed a donut shop - "

_"Kevin."_

"What?"

_"Call me Kevin. Not dispatch."_

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I could almost see him. I had no doubt he was tapping himself on the chest. "Okay _Kevin,_ first off we're in Unit Two, second we are northbound on whatever road the donut shop is on, in pursuit of a tangerine colored llama. The llama is currently taking the alley between the combo florist and video rental store and the drugstore-slash-dance studio."

_"Tangerine?"_

"Yes Kevin, tangerine, it's a light shade of orange."

_"Then say a light shade of orange."_

I felt confident that I was going to hit retirement before this conversation ended. "Kevin please hand the comm to someone else before one of us dies."

There were a few moments of static and the clanging noise of the receiver being dropped, then Creeley's voice boomed into the car. Just what I needed.

_"Unit Three where the fuck's Chief's coffee? It's gettin' critical up in here."_

Andy and I looked at each other. And then he took the receiver and clicked the talk button.

"The number you have dialed has been disconnected. Please check the number and dial again."

_"Burns you peckerhead don't you turn that radio off - "_

The amount of respect the tall skinny Irishman earned in that brief single moment when he did exactly what Creeley told him _not_ to do was more than enough to cinch it. We weren't just going to be good friends - we were going to be _best_ friends. He put the receiver back on its cradle and shrugged, dropping back into the back seat with a loud sigh. A second later I heard his seatbelt click.

"That was very heroic of you, Burns."

He winked at me in the rearview mirror.

"What's he gonna do, take my badge?"

The llama had absconded. Another hour of driving aimlessly around the entirety of Weemeetwhoever showed us nothing but snow and ice and still more snow and a whole bunch of shabby looking Victorian era houses, and as we were doubling back one final time to give the beast a last chance to surrender itself, Andy pointed to the donut shop and told me to pull in. Chief's coffee. The poor man had been waiting for it all morning. It wasn't my problem but I didn't have any particular kink for getting Andy in trouble - and my hangover was still kicking me soundly in the ass, so coffee didn't sound like a terrible idea.

I stood on the sidewalk squinting up at the sign hanging from the bright red awning while Andy got all his legs out of the car. "The Star and Shield, huh?" He sauntered up beside me and looked up with a proud grin.

"I made that. The star's like the old Ranger badges and the shield's like the ones we have now. It's a pub sign, like in Ireland."

"Yeah, I noticed that. You're the local do-everything guy aren't you." He gave me a shy smile and I wondered what a lad from Louth was doing so far from home. I hoped it wasn't a sad story. "This must be the official cop hangout, huh?"

"Sort of." He opened the door and held it for me. "Guy that runs it was one of ours. He retired a couple years ago. Don't mention Sarah to him."

Oh now _this_ sounded interesting. I could only assume as we went inside that he meant the blonde woman who'd nearly snapped Saint's thumb right off his hand. We hadn't rounded up Hanrahan's llama or made it back to the station with Chief's coffee yet, but I knew one thing for absodamnlutely certain...I was gonna be mentioning the _hell_ out of Sarah to whoever was inside this donut dive, because I only had a year to go in this ice infested hellhole and I was going to take down as many innocent bystanders with me as I could - because nobody here with the possible exception of Andy could be worth not messing with for my own personal enjoyment. I already had my best buddy lined up, I didn't need any of these other yabos.

Might as well have a little ill advised fun to balance out the suffering.

I stepped inside to a blessed warmth and the best coffee-and-pastries smell I'd ever come across in nearly a decade of living up to the donut-swilling cop stereotype. Andy came around me while I stopped by the door to take my coat off and went to the counter to clap hands with whoever was back there, and when I looked up all I could think was _Oh...Sarah who...?_

Behind the counter in a green apron stood what most definitely _wasn't_ the 50-something year old retiree I'd envisioned.

"Hey Ted, this is Greta. She's my partner."

The guy looked over at me with a cocked eyebrow. "Partner?"

"Yeah, I got deputized this morning in the middle of a high speed llama pursuit."

"Ah, yeah...Red's fence is down again huh?" He smiled, and I swear to god I heard an angel lose control of its bowels. He reached a hand out over the counter. "How do you want me to make your coffee?"

I shook it, though I couldn't feel much with my frozen fingers.

"Like your life depends on it."

Andy sat down at a little bistro-style table that he could barely tuck his legs under and tore into a frothy cappuccino and what had to be the biggest damn cinnamon bun I've ever seen in my life. There was no way I would have been able to scoot up to that table without his knees digging into my crotch, so I stood at the counter and watched ex-cop Ted assemble a tray of toothache inducing pastries that would have been more at home in a French patisserie than in Wehateya Minnewhosit.

"You left the department for this? I mean, I can understand the leaving part - I'm on a goddamn _llama_ call right now. But what made you choose - " I put my hands up and gestured around at the little shop, all done up in pink and lavender and more aptly suited to a pair of spinster sisters with a knack for matchmaking the locals than a retired cop. It was a story I sort of wanted to hear if for no other reason than to get an explanation for the frilly tablecloths that adorned every table. _"This."_

He glanced around, never pausing with the icing bag that was oozing robins-egg blue buttercream onto pudding filled bavarians with surprising skill. “I dunno. I don’t think I was ever cut out for it, to be honest." He shot me a shy look over his shoulder. "I liked going for donuts in the morning…that was about the extent of my job satisfaction, knowing the local bakery was always gonna set aside the sprinkles for me at nine a.m. on the dot. You know, the little pink and blue ones? Not the crunchy little round balls but the sorta long-ish ones." He shrugged and my head finally settled on an age for him; he couldn't be a day over thirty-five. God I wanted his story, his _real_ story, not this donut fable. "After a while it became sorta obvious to me and probably everybody else too…I was only in it for the sprinkles.” 

“Nonpariels. The sprinkles, they’re called nonp- nevermind. Why don’t you know this if you're the baker?" 

He grinned, and somewhere between the smudge of blue icing on his sharp jawline and the red flannel shirt that matched every other male I'd encountered thus far, I felt my flutter-meter amp up. He was cute in a barely-contained bad boy sort of way that just _almost_ made me go warm in the cheeks. “I just make ‘em, I don’t read the labels.”

Andy and I were getting back in the car when he stopped and muttered a curse. "Forgot Chief's coffee, he'll kill me. Be right back - "

The words were barely out of his mouth when a streak of orange - _tangerine_ \- shot out of the narrow corridor between the donut shop and the record store and bolted past us. The damn llama. Andy and I just looked at each other for a long second, then I put my cup of coffee on top of the car and reached in for the radio.

"Dispatch - "

_"Kevin."_

"Kevin, right. You're tapping yourself on the chest right now aren't you."

_"What?"_

"Never mind. This is Unit Three - " I could see Andy shaking his head and mouthing _Two_ at me - "Correction, this is Unit _Two,_ we are currently resuming pursuit of - " I knocked some snow off the roof of the car toward my new partner. "What's it's name again?"

"Elsie."

"We are currently resuming pursuit of Elsie at the corner of - "

"Ikwe and Nagazh."

I stared at him. "What the fuck kind of street names is that?:

"It's Ojibwe."

"Of course it is, what else would it be. Kevin, please tell whoever's in charge of your paddywagon to meet us out here by the donut shop."

There was a long pause, and then - _"What the hell's a paddywagon?"_

"Okay whatever you guys use to pick up jailbreak llamas."

_"We don't do that."_

"What??"

Andy was shaking his head again from the other side of the car. "We rope 'em and drive them back to Hanrahan's. They trot beside the car real nice."

I didn't even know what to say to that. Kevin was humming to himself over the radio, Andy was bouncing in place blowing mouth fog to entertain himself, and it was starting to snow again. And as I stared up at the slowly swinging _Star and Shield_ sign that was beginning to squeak loudly in protest to the icy wind that was steadily rising, the reality of my next one to two years settled in with a disappointing finality.

"I'm in a goddamn Keystone Cops movie."

**_To be continued..._ **

**_Next week: Chief's fitness program, or how to solve the poaching problem using snow as a deadly weapon_ **


	8. We'll Name Our Children Elsie and Wilson

I'm not sure at what point on Thursday evening the universe looked down at me and said _"That_ one, lets fuck up that one's life a little bit more," but I imagine the scenario involved a lot of sniggering and money changing hands. All I know for sure is that I got drunk, hopped into bed with a co-worker whom I subsequently was partnered with, and was sent out on a llama hunt all within a twenty-four hour period of time during which I was called every insulting variation on _female_ that the numbskulls in this icy backwater could think of, with the possible exception of _bitch_ \- though I had a sneaking suspicion that one was probably tossed around with some fairly reckless abandon after I left the station.

And now it was snowing hard while I put my foot in Andy's cupped hands and let him heft me over a ridiculously high fence in some bad tempered old lady's back yard, still chasing that damn llama. I suppose that's why I looked up when I did - interference from the sadistic universal overlords, whoever they were, giving me a thump in the side of the head - and saw a guy dragging a very deceased-looking _something_ out of a tool shed in the yard I was currently climbing into. Andy gave me a push upward and I lost my grip on the ice covered slats, and as I was faceplanting into the snow on the other side the guy turned around and spotted us.

It was one of those surreal moments of awkward disbelief that so often hit us in life, like when someone kicks open the stall door you just happen to be in and they've already got their pants down before you have a chance to start screaming. The guy stopped where he stood, arms full of the back end of a moose or sasquatch or whatever the hell it was and looking very obviously like he shouldn't be there, while I scrambled around in the deepening snow trying to find the belt radio I'd dropped on my way over the fence. I had no idea what species the carcass was- likely not human at least, but adrenaline and confusion are notorious for blurring lines in the heat of the moment - and gut instinct told me he wouldn't be looking quite that guilty if things were on the up and up. Either way it immediately became suspicious as hell when he dropped it and took off for the opposite fence.

"Hey, stop right there!"

He, of course, didn't. But Andy, bless his lanky soul, was already over the fence and dropping into the snow beside me - and when I yelled at him to stop the guy, he immediately took off across the yard and had him tackled before he could make it to the other side without me going into any detail about how I wanted him to do it. He didn't even ask why.

It was sort of impressive. And since the guy not only ran but left evidence of whatever alleged crime he'd committed laying right there at the scene, it was also more than just a little bit incriminating. I kicked around in the snow till I found my radio and skirted around the corpse to where Andy stood holding onto the back of the suspect's parka.

"Does he live here?"

Andy tugged back the guy's cinched hood and looked at his face, breaking into a wide smile of recognition. "Oh hey Wilson."

"Hey Burns."

"How's your mom?"

"I dunno, you tell me, you saw her last."

Andy's smile widened and I knew I wasn't going to want to hear whatever was going to come out of his mouth next; it had already been well established in just the few hours I'd known him that he was the town Romeo, so I cut him off before he and Wilson could launch into anything that was going to make my vagina flinch in revulsion. _"Okay_ so if you two are finished with the pleasantries and perversions would you please tell me who Wilson is and why he's dragging a dead thing out of an old lady's shed? And shame on you Andy, geezus." Wilson looked to be at least thirty. Shag and Bag Burns indeed. I glared at Andy and his grin vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

"We catch him poaching a lot. That's an elk. This isn't elk season." He shot Wilson a disappointed look and I swear to god, Wilson actually had the good manners to look sheepish about his sins.

"Ehh you know how it is, Burny. I get a tenner for the antlers across the line in Turnbull and Shandy'll pay a hundred for the meat. And god knows your nug isn't getting any cheaper."

"You're his drug dealer??" I threw my hands up to stop Andy answering just as his mouth was opening to spill what I'm sure would have been a completely guileless confession. "Never mind, I don't want to know. And that's an elk? Never mind, I don't need to know that either. Just tell me if he's supposed to have it or not and whether or not this _not_ being elk season means we have to take his ass in - because frankly I'm willing to do just about anything to get off this llama chase."

Andy nodded and Wilson shrugged.

"Alright, just stay there while I call this in and see what Chief wants us to do."

I stumbled in the rapidly deepening snow and cursed, thrown all kinds of off balance by the direction my morning was suddenly taking. I'd been minding my own damn business, hunting llama like I was told, delivering coffee, just obeying orders and doing my best to survive this Fargo-ass shit of an alternate universe...and now I was standing three feet from a horned carcass bleeding out into the snow with its tongue hanging out and trying to avoid arresting my partner for being WeFuckedya's local drug lord and notorious mother-shagger. I was going to have to teach that dumb Irishman how to keep his mouth shut or I was going to end up cuffing him and putting his ass in a cell next to his poacher buddy.

And the moose thing, whatever it was, was laying there staring at me with cold blank eyes and not helping in the least. Dead animals have always been right at the top of the shudder scale for me. I shot Andy a highly judgmental look over my shoulder and mumbled "The guy's mom? Really?"

_"Unit Three respond."_

I slammed on the call button and snarled into the radio, "It's Unit Two fuckface, geezus you've only got two damn cars on the entire fucking fleet why can't you get it straight just _once_ \- "

_"Officer Morley this is Chief, stop bitching about the car and give me your goddamn status."_

Oh...oh _shit._ I yanked the radio away from my face in horror. Wilson was sniggering and Andy was cringing. I kicked snow at them both and slammed the handheld around in the air a few times to avoid throwing it, then took a deep breath and hit the button again.

"Chief this is Unit Thr- TWO - Unit Two. We have apprehended a suspect at - " I looked at Andy and mouthed _Where are we??_

"Tamara LaMarche's house."

"Address, stupid! What's the address??"

"Oh." He glanced over his shoulder at the next house over and pointed to it. "Next door to the Huxtons."

I think I stared at him for a good twenty seconds before my brain switched back on. "Oh my god I feel like I'm strapped to the nose of a rocket being shot straight up Trump's colon. And you're the smart one of the bunch, aren't you?"

Wilson piped in. "Eleven oh four Wabooz Lane."

"Wa- _Wabooz??_ Let me guess, that's Ojibby for llama fu- "

_"Officer Morley how'd you like to spend the next year teaching preschoolers about stranger danger?"_

Chief's voice startled me and I jumped, but quick recovery has always been my one true skill aside from driving and I shot Wilson the giggling poacher a look of pure bloody murder to shut him up. He and Andy both went straight faced and I took my thumb very deliberately off the relay button to scream "I WOULD LOVE THAT THANK YOU VERY MUCH YOU SMUG ASSHOLE - SIGN ME THE _FUCK_ UP!!" at the muted transmitter. Then I pushed the button to turn it back on and said, politely and professionally, "We're in the back garden of the LaMarche home on Whorebooze Lane."

It was then that my day took yet another turn down the twisty roads of ice-covered hell, plunging me deep into the bonechilling waters of Satan's summer home jacuzzi.

_"Thanks for volunteering. Miss Cripsley'll be expecting you at the daycare center at 8 Monday morning."_

What the - ? He couldn't have -

Could he? I stared at the radio and heard Andy whisper "That's an open-channel two-way, Greta."

Nothing, and I mean _nothing_ could have prepared me for the sudden dropping sensation of my entire nervous system taking a dump into the bottom of my shoes. "What did you say?"

"The relay button is rewired, it's always on."

"What??"

"We modified all our radios."

Oh god.

"WHY?!"

Andy looked at me like I should know this already. "We had a guy with one hand, it was easier for him."

A perverse desire to pay Wilson twenty dollars to poach the fuck out of me overcame me with such a fearsome intensity that I completely failed to reconcile what Andy just told me with what blasted out of my face next. I didn't even care, to be honest - I was already so far gone down A Road Called Screwed that there was no reason not to just keep going. "Are you fucking _kidding_ me? I mean, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?? Please say you're fucking kidding me and you backwater idiots didn't alter AN ENTIRE STATION'S FUCKING EQUIPMENT to cater to ONE FUCKING PERSON and now I'm standing here in a fucking SNOWSTORM screaming obscenities _AT MY FUCKING BOSS_ because I think he _CAN'T FUCKING HEAR ME!!"_

Andy shrugged. Wilson was sighing loudly, making it clear how bored he was with the proceedings, casting furtive glances toward the fence like he was doing the math on how likely he was to get over it before one of us caught him. And despite the freezing cold, I stood there feeling like my head was on fire.

Chief had heard everything I'd said, including the smug asshole bit. Fortunately he seemed to have signed off after consigning me to the depths of community service hell though, because I had a meltdown waiting in line and its turn was up.

I turned my face up to a gym-sock grey sky and let it howl.

"Who the _fuck_ uses open channel two-ways, that's for goddamn baby monitors and _nannycams!_ What the _FUCK_ is wrong with _this fucking goddamn punchline of a fucking police department?!"_

And then I screamed like a banshee having its nuts backed over by a Kenworth, because why the hell not. The universe wasn't listening and I was fairly certain there was no god, at least not for me. And I'd pretty much used up a decade's supply of fucks.

I felt certain I was going to need more of those before my year was up.

There was a long pause, and then over the low grade whistle of the icy wind whipping my face and the rustling of the trees in the back yard of eleven oh four Warbuckz Lane, Chief's voice broke the eerie relative silence that had fallen over us once my own voice stopped echoing off the side of the metal utility shed. _"Officer Morley, tell missus LaMarche hello for me."_

He was just dicking with me now, I could feel it in my cold-rattled bones. I wasn't going to walk out of this one unscathed. I'd be lucky if I crawled out of it with my job. And I almost told him to take a number because Andy probably got to old lady LaMarche first, but I held my tongue and instead shoved the radio inside my coat to keep anything else that might fly out of my mouth away from the Chief's ears. Everything about _everything_ was so far off protocol that I sort of just stood there in a dumb kind of shock, not sure how to even respond to him or to the situation at hand. And then I looked down at the deceased puma whatever thing and remembered what the issue at hand actually was.

All I could do was just soldier through it and hope I came out on the other side without being taken out by friendly fire.

I pulled the radio back out of my coat and cleared my throat. Professional and businesslike. I was a respected officer, once upon a time. I chaired morning briefings over a niche department of eighty, the entire HSP squad considered me their superior officer even though we all shared the same rank. Hawk trusted me to lead my team with little supervision and consulted with me on assignments. I was coming up on a decade of dedicated service. I could get through this.

I _would,_ dammit.

"Chief, we've apprehended some guy named Wilson, we caught him with a...an antlered...thing...Andy says it's not the right season for it so do we bring him in?"

_"Hey Wilson."_

Wilson leaned toward me and chirped "Hey Chief" at the radio in my hand. Andy wasn't holding onto him anymore and the entire setup was starting to look more like a backyard discussion between neighbors to decide what to do about the branches hanging over the mutual fence than an apprehend-and-arrest for poaching and evasion. I couldn't believe this was my life, but yep. This was my life.

_"Where's Elsie, Morley?"_

"Excuse me?"

_"Tell me you didn't forget about the llama."_

"No Sir, I didn't forget about the llama. We were doing the llama thing when this...other thing...happened. In fact I think your buddy Wilson might have shot the llama."

Wilson and Andy both chimed in with "It's an elk" while I slashed my hand at them to shut them up.

"Do I bring him in or not, Chief?"

_"It's your call Morley, figure it out. But that llama better be back in Red Hanrahan's field by noon. And get Andy back here with my coffee, you copy? If anything happens to him I'm holding you responsible."_

Of literally everything he could have said to me, that was probably the choice that hit home the hardest. I took a deep breath and waited until I knew my voice would reflect the resolve in my gut, then clicked the relay button purely out of habit. "Yes Sir, I copy."

We took Wilson back to the vehicle; I wasn't clear on the whole legal/illegal aspect of poaching Bambi's mom and Chief obviously had no interest in guiding me in the right direction, so operating on the assumption that we could cut him loose later if I was wrong seemed the way to go. Right up to the moment when I went to put him in the car and felt something hard and menacing under the back of his jacket and made what the real world would consider a fair call. Wilson wasn't cuffed - he hadn't resisted at any point and I hadn't deemed it necessary - but when I stepped back from him he spun around and reached behind him.

"GUN GUN GUN!!"

Andy just stood there with a confused look on his face while I scrambled to keep my footing on the slick sidewalk. There was a clumsy flurry of motion while I grabbed onto the side of the car to keep from going down and Wilson lost his footing at the same time, sliding onto his ass at my feet and knocking them right out from under me. A delayed reaction finally slotted into place in Andy's head and he yelled "What?!" just as I was reaching for the sidearm on my hip that I hadn't yet remembered wasn't there.

 _"What?!"_ Chief's voice broke through the mayhem, adding more confusion to the proceedings as I turned toward the disembodied voice and lost even more of my bearings. The radio was on the ground and he was yelling at me through it. _"What the hell did you say Morley?!"_

"He's got a fucking gun!!"

_"Disengage!!"_

Odd how hearing that word clicked so hard in my head. It had been the last thing Hawk said to me right before I stopped obeying orders and made the decision to use a quarter million dollar vehicle as a deadly weapon and set off an irreversible chain of events that ended with me standing in the snow somewhere in Minnesomething, running the quick math on whether I should protect Andy or actively apprehend an armed suspect. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I froze, for one gut wrenching second.

The next words out of my mouth were "Andy get down!!", just about the same time I was realizing I wasn't armed. Everything slowed down and sped up at the same time, and in that split second eyeblink of time between me looking from him to Andy, Wilson the poacher bolted.

Goddamn if I was going to lose a suspect on my first day on the job. I'd already failed to apprehend the llama.

Andy was standing there just staring at him as he ran, like his brain couldn't shift from what I'd just said to him to the fact that our detainee was absconding post haste. I gave him a hard shove and slammed the car door, losing my footing on the ice again and going down like the proverbial sack while simultaneously making my final decision.

_"Get him!!"_

It took Andy a second to get his legs going in the same direction on the slippery concrete, but before I could pull myself up and get back on my own feet, he was off after the guy like a long skinny bullet shot out of a pistol. I slipped and slid and went to my knees twice, but finally got moving myself, bringing up the rear in what had to be the most embarrassing commencement of a foot pursuit in law enforcement history.

I was maybe three slippery blocks away from our car with Wilson and Andy about a half a block ahead of me when I saw a Jeep Cherokee take a turn onto the main road adjacent to us. There was a red light on the roof. Either Chief had sent out the troops or he'd come to watch me screw up in person.

 _Come on cutiepie, make those crazy legs work for us_ was the only thought screaming through my skull on repeat as I struggled to keep Andy and Wilson in sight. The car keys had been lost in the deep snow beside the car at some point while Wilson and I took turns falling on our asses - or maybe he'd snatched them, who the hell even knew anymore - so my only option was to follow on foot...because Andy was my responsibility, he was a civilian, and I had jokingly deputized him without thinking for a second that he would take the commission seriously. I'd already made so many stupid mistakes that it would be a miracle if Chief didn't just shoot me on sight.

No way in hell was I going to lose what little control I had left over this situation.

Which wasn't by any means the easiest task I'd ever taken on. 

Every time Andy got close to Wilson one or the other of them would slip and fall, scrambling around clumsily on the ice until they finally got their footing back and the chase was on again. All I could do was maintain visual contact and try to keep up, because Wilson was wearing cleated work boots that gave him a definite advantage and Andy had the longest legs I've ever seen on a human being. Once he got moving he covered ground shockingly fast. And bless his obedient little heart, he did exactly what I told him to do.

He caught Wilson.

I finally caught up to them, wheezing and trembling with that sick sort of bruised-lung sensation you get from breathing cold air when you're not remotely used to it. My own particular brand of not-in-shape wasn't doing me any favors either; I'd been off duty for far too long and had the shaky legs and swimmy head to prove it. Andy had Wilson on the ground and was trying to pull him to his feet without assplanting himself while I frantically hit the transmit button on my radio. It was standard procedure to call in developments no matter what podunk department you belonged to, and an armed suspect on the ground after a pursuit was definitely to be found in that category. But nobody was answering and the only thing I could think to do was to get Andy a safe distance away and immobilize Wilson however I could manage - a task without a lot of viable options for one reason in particular.

I wasn't the muscle of any team I might ever end up on. I was the driver, end of story. Joe had been the brawn. I wasn't even particularly good with a firearm - again, that was Joe - but I didn't have to be because I had other skills that made me useful while someone else handled the rest.

And to the best of my knowledge, Wilson was armed.

And I was not.

But Wilson didn't know that. I moved my right hand up under the side of my coat and left it there, hoping he would assume I was palming something a particular shade of gunmetal grey.

"Do you have a weapon Wilson?"

"What?? No!"

"Wilson I'm warning you, you got me on my first day of work here and I'm all for doing something impressive because this has been a _shitstorm_ of a morning in my world. I'm gonna ask you one more time - "

"Where would I get a gun? Come on lady, look at me, I'm too delicate for firearms. Tell her Burny, remember the time I nearly shit myself during the pig blood scene in that Sissy Spacek movie?"

I stared at the idiot on the ground at my feet, wondering with a vague sort of panic whether everyone in this town was like him. It wouldn't have surprised me if the answer was yes.

"Why did you run?"

"Because you chased me! Don't chase me and I won't run. Geez who doesn't know that, you learn it when you're six, remember? Tag, chase, dodgeball? All that?"

"Oh my god. Shut up." Yet another conversation that I would still be having on my deathbed. "Hold him while I cuff him."

Andy did as I told him, and when I had our poacher safely handcuffed and had recited his rights and we were walking him back to the car, I glanced over at my ridiculously tall and frighteningly speedy new partner with the scruffy angelic face and saw how hard he was breathing. He looked like he was about to be sick. "You're not gonna drop dead on me are you? Because it'd be a shame if you missed the commendation I'm going to make sure you get for that impressive bit of Jesse Owens you just pulled off."

"I'm okay."

"Are you carrying?"

He nodded, bending over to put his hands on his knees and hang his head between them. "About a quarter ounce, yeah."

"A gun, are you carrying a _gun_ you frigging - "

His head whipped up and he shot me a shocked look. "What? No, we don't have guns."

"You don't - are you fucking kidding me??"

"Chief keeps them locked up. We had an incident once."

"You came out here with me without a gun?"

"I'm not a cop Greta!! I'm the gopher and we were just supposed to get coffee and the llama!!" He groaned and leaned back against the side of the building, clutching his stomach like the cinnamon bun he'd had for breakfast was about to march back onstage for a curtain call. I didn't have any idea why I suddenly felt like hugging the big goof, but it wasn't a welcome urge and I put it away fast.

"Then why you runnin' my suspect." I reached over and pushed him, hard on the shoulder. "Freak."

I don't think he was amused. His knees were scraped up and he was starting to have a nosebleed, but there was an excited flush to his cheeks that made me think he might have enjoyed the chase, just a little bit. I only hoped he wouldn't puke in the cruiser before I got him back to the station.

"Come on cutiepie, help me get him in the car."

I looked up from putting Wilson in the back seat and saw Chief coming toward us from the alley where the Cherokee I'd seen tracking us was parked. I stood there with my hands on my hips, glaring at him until he was in bitching range.

"You could have helped you know."

He may have been grinning at me just a little, but it was hard to tell what with him squinting in the tiny bit of sunlight that had finally managed to crack through the grey cloud cover. "It looked to me like you and not-officer Burns here had the situation under control."

"Damn straight we did. Andy here's got the legs of a thoroughbred."

He cocked an eye at Andy, still wheezing from where he sat on the hood of the car with his head on his knees. "And the lungs of a coal miner."

"Yeah well...he did Weeweeville proud."

Chief just shook his head and popped the trunk, pulling out a black state-issue bulletproof jacket that he tossed onto the hood. "Put this damn vest on the next time you get in a car with Morley. I mean it Andy, I catch you out on so much as a coffee run with this woman without Kevlar and I'm gonna put Hobo on your ass."

"Okay boss."

He turned that steely blue stare on me then, and I knew the next words out of his mouth were going to outline my immediate future. He started to say something but stopped before the words came out. Instead, he pointed at Wilson, sitting in the back seat of the car trying to force the cuffs off his wrists with his foot.

"Did you frisk him?"

"I did. I thought he had a sidearm under the back of his coat but I didn't find it when I patted him down just now. He may have tossed it during the pursuit."

"Did you check his boots?"

"His boots?"

Chief sighed and leaned down to look into the car. "Wilson are you packing?"

"No Sir."

"Are you lying to me?"

"Would I do that, Chief? Come on - "

Andy groaned and rolled over to puke off the front of the car just then, and in that split second moment of time when Chief and I both turned to look at him, Wilson jumped out of the car, slipped on the ice, plowed into Chief on his way down, and then was up and sprinting off down the utility alley to our right before any of us could figure out which way we should be looking.

"Oh for fuck's sake. It took us an hour to catch him!!"

And then the chase was on again. Andy slid off the hood with a miserable sounding moan, grabbed the vest, and took out after Wilson - and a split second later, after exchanging a look with me, Chief was off and running toward the short cutoff alley to our left shouting for me to call for backup.

I had no clue where the hell I was, where any of these streets ended up, or where any of the alleys emptied out. All I knew was that they were too narrow for the car, Wilson likely had a weapon in his boot, Andy was lighting out after him for a second time, and Chief was yelling for me to head east as he rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

I'd never been on a high speed pursuit on foot before that day, but in the span of a half hour on my first morning in Wefuckedyermom I'd been involved in two.

There's something to be said for new experiences.

And that something is _holy shit._ I hit the relay button - a habit I was apparently never going to be able to break - and yelled into the radio.

"Okay Kevin, time to do your job. Send backup to whatever street old lady LaMarche lives on and get it here fast, we've got an armed suspect escaping on foot - "

_"Did you lose Wilson?"_

"Oh for fuck's sa- yes Kevin, I lost Wilson. Just send backup _right now,_ he's armed."

_"Where'd Wilson get a firearm? He's a bit delicate for that."_

"I don't know but Chief said call it in so get us some backup out here!!"

There was a long pause, then I heard Kevin's deep droning monotone speaking to someone in the background.

_"Special Unit is on its way."_

I didn't know who or what Special Unit was, but by the time I reached the end of the east alley I could hear Chief screaming _Goddammit Andy get that vest on!! Get it on now!!_ from somewhere a block over...and one thing was becoming painfully obvious.

Two things, actually.

First, I was going to keel over from a heart attack if I didn't acclimate to these damn ungodly temps soon.

And second, as Andy charged past the end of the adjoining lane in hot pursuit of Wilson the poacher whining "Jesus Christ what the fuck am I doing with my life?!!", I knew my career was likely going to last another fifteen minutes at best, because I'd let a simple apprehension of a local mischiefmaker escalate into a situation that called for backup from not only the Chief himself, but a goddamn special unit.

I'd be going back to LA alright. As a filing clerk - if I was real damn lucky.

**_To be continued..._ **


	9. Weemeetme Halfway

"Stop!! You're under arrest!!"

"NO I'M NOT!!"

"Yes you are!! Stop!! _PLEASE!!"_

"You're not a cop you're the errand boy you dumb shit!!"

I could no longer see the pair of them, but I could hear their voices echoing down the long narrow alley that I had turned down on the assumption that I could find less icy ground and avoid busting my ass. Chief had turned down the end of the opposite alley that emptied into the center street, still yelling "ANDY GET THAT GODDAMN VEST ON!!" as he tailed them at a fairly impressive speed, though it wasn't quite fast enough to catch up. I hadn't noticed until just then that he had a slight limp and I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was tiring out, but the chase showed zero sign of ending any time soon and I felt my soul die just a little bit more each time the acoustics of the streets told me it had changed direction again.

I was doing a shitty job of keeping up myself and honestly I was beginning to wonder if Wilson was methed off his skull. Andy was the only one who had any hopes of actually pacing him, but I did my best on the less icy adjacent side lane that my side alley emptied onto; as long as I got to somewhere where I could keep them in sight I knew I could get there within a few seconds of the takedown that was undoubtedly coming, because even though the lanky Irishman was still heaving his guts every time they slowed down, he'd already caught Wilson twice since we'd first apprehended him less than a half hour ago. And if I didn't get to them in time, Chief would - he was behind them about forty yards and I could hear him screaming at Andy the whole time.

_"Andy you fucking dumbass get that vest on!!"_

And poor old Shag and Bag Burns, huffing his lungs out and flying faster than I've ever seen a human being that big move, was whining _"Oh fuck oh geezus oh fuck oh geezus"_ while he tried to get into the heavy Kevlar vest without losing either his footing or his speed.

It was a clusterfuck on so many fronts.

We were a goddamn Monty Python skit come to embarrassing life, in full color with audio and accompanying internal narrative. Andy and Wilson were tearing down the center street now on a pure sheet of ice, slipping and sliding and doing an amazing job of covering ground despite falling and flailing around every time they tried to round a curve. Chief was running parallel to them again down a side street not more than a half block west, reestablishing visual contact every twenty yards or so through the short alleys that connected his street to theirs and yelling orders at Andy each time he could see them. And I was stumbling through alternating snowy patches as I cut through a series of unplowed front yards a block to the east while the terribly amused residents of Weefuckya shoveled white shit off their porches and watched. I had long since stopped yelling POLICE, CLEAR THE WAY and was just trying my hardest to stay on my feet and not lose a lung to the icy air that was stabbing through my sternum every time I took a breath.

This place wasn't for me, obviously. But at least the oddly linear setup of the downtown streets allowed Chief and I both to keep up and maintain visuals on the two idiots flying like a couple of cranked up methheads through the middle of it all.

I passed another building and shot a look down the alley that opened up as I ran past it. I could see Andy fly by, then Chief a half block over. Wilson was screaming for Andy to stop chasing him. Chief was barking into his radio for backup to get their ass to the scene, which he had to update verbally each time he passed a new street. Andy sounded like he was alternating crying and yelling _Don't shoot me Wilson!!_ while Wilson shouted back _I don't have a fucking gun!!_ And all I kept thinking to myself as this unbelievable scenario played out around me was _I should have taken Hawk's suggestion to retire, married him, done the community-conscious Captain's Wife thing._

It would have been a slow soul-suffocating way to die, but at least I would be warm and not in danger of collapsing a lung.

But no, I had to be a stubborn defiant asshole and insist on staying on the force. Weecantwinhere was my punishment for that choice. A year of chasing Wilson down alleys and hunting llamas and listening to Creeley low-key sexually assault everyone in the room while silently sending a prayer heavenward every time Andy opened his mouth that he wouldn't spill the beans about me riding him like a drunk rodeo clown on my first night in this godforsaken town.

There was no doubt the universe loved me. I was its favorite joke, the one it just kept telling over and over to anyone who would listen.

It took a mail truck to finally stop the guy. I was maybe half a block back and begging God for my second wind when Wilson changed direction and cut across the alley in front of me - and plowed straight into the side of a delivery Jeep sitting in front of a distinctly gingerbread-looking house. Andy had slid into a wall coming around the corner and Chief finally passed him, slowing to a heavy breathing halt just as I got there. Wilson was on the ground. Whether he was conscious or unconscious was anybody's guess and we still didn't know if he was armed or not, so Chief put his arm out to block me from getting closer and radioed the halted pursuit to the station. I could barely hear Kevin's slow motion monotone over the comm around the sick sounding rasp of my own hoarse breathing.

My lungs felt like they were on fire; six months off duty with medically-required light activity can - and apparently does - do that to a person. Chief shot me a concerned look and I waved him off as he yanked the cuffs off his belt and knelt next to Wilson, who was rolling around on the icy street kicking the chain of the cuffs I had put on him earlier, trying to break them loose.

"Kevin, get that damn unit out here now, we got the stupid shi- "

He didn't get any further than that. A resounding pop echoed off the row of little houses and reflex had me and Chief both ducking for cover without thinking about it, but in the very next second we both realized something.

Andy wasn't with us yet.

"Jesus Christ!!" Wilson was thrashing around on the ground slapping at his boot like his foot was on fire, then he suddenly looked up wide-eyed at Chief with his mouth open, an _Oh shit_ look plastered all over his face. "It's not real! I swear to god Chief, it's just got blanks in it!"

_"Wilson you dumb son of a - "_

"I swear Chief, it's a prop gun, I stole it from the theater group when we were doing Little Women last summer!"

I didn't know what I thought I was going to do about it or if I should even bother, but it was looking for a second or two like my superior officer was about to beat the shit out of our perp. There was such a fierce look of baldfaced anger with a huge serving of exhausted resignation on Chief's face that my first impulse was to back away with my hands up until he settled on one or the other. Instead I reached out and tapped him on the shoulder, and he heaved a deep sigh that had every bit of the weight of the world sitting heavy on it as he turned to me. It was a little bit heartwrenching. And then he jerked like I'd slapped him over the ear, his face suddenly draining white. _"Where's Andy?"_

"He's fine, he's still in the alley."

"Go check him - _now!"_

There was no wiggle room in that order, I could hear it in his voice. I looked around while he wrestled Wilson up onto his feet and kicked him in the ankle, verifying that there was indeed a gun in his boot, and spotted Andy about twenty yards behind us at the mouth of the alley. He was doubled over against the side of a red brick building dry heaving so hard it wouldn't have surprised me in the least if he'd shattered a rib from the sheer force of it.

"He's fine, he's over there."

"He doesn't sound fine." A horrible retching sound carried to us and Wilson started to whine about being susceptible to suggestion-vomiting. "Go check him, Morley. And he better be in the same condition you took him out in."

"He's not a rental car."

"Goddamn right, now for once in your career _obey a fucking order."_

I was feeling just a little bit persecuted by his tone but I did as I was told. It wasn't my fault everyone in this ridiculous little burg on the goddamn low rent side of the North Pole shared a communal brain cell, and it certainly wasn't my fault Wilson was the one using it today. I slipped and slid my way back to where Andy had stopped and held onto the wall beside him to keep myself on my feet. I'd spent entirely too much time on my ass already this day and the seat of my jeans felt damp and disgusting.

"You okay buddy?"

He nodded, wiping at his mouth with the back of his sleeve. "Yeah. I can't run after I eat, it never ends well."

"Sorry about that. You did good though, I'd have had to just run him over with the car." He laughed a little and it seemed he was recovering pretty quick, but my future was sort of dependent on the boss's mood so I followed my orders to the letter anyway and verified it. "Chief wants to know if you're intact."

Andy looked up and gave me a brave little cockeyed wink. "You bet. European."

It took me a second to figure out what he meant, and when it hit me I had to laugh. I _did_ vaguely remember that particular detail from the previous evening's events. Apparently there's something about a good sized uncut chunk of manhood that stays with you no matter how many whiskeys you've thrown back.

He was looking immensely proud of his little joke when a low-pitched rumbling sound from behind us brought his head up. "Saint John on a motorcycle."

"What?" He was looking past me and I wasn't sure I wanted to turn around and see whatever had his attention; the day had been popping at the seams with bullshittery and nonsense since the moment I'd woken up in his bed that morning and I'd been marching in a nonstop parade of it every second since. I didn't have the stomach for much more. "What weird kind of Irish curse is that?"

"No, it's really Saint John on a motorcycle." He pointed toward the end of the alley where a low riding Harley Davidson was rumbling into the crossway. The tattooed guy from the station put his feet on the ground and eased the bike to a stop, looking up and flashing a wide grin when Andy waved to him. The adoration on Andy's face was palpable.

"Let me guess - Special Unit is that guy?"

"Yup."

"He your hero?"

He shrugged. "I suppose. As heroes go he's not a bad choice."

A vivid recall of the term _new chick_ reverbed in my head and I made a mental note to add the Chief's brother to my neverending shitlist, right below Creeley. "Seems like you could find better people to worship, stringbean."

"Naw, Sinjin's a good guy." He bent over to brush the snow off his pants, pausing to take a wincing peek at his bleeding shin inside the torn knee of his blue jeans. "You'll see when you get to know him."

"Not gonna happen. I'm on the temp program here, babe. Take a picture to remember me by because you're not gonna get to look at me for long."

He stared at me while I knelt down and propped his foot up on my knee to check his injury. "That's too bad. I like you, Greta."

Something in me jerked hard, like an invisible hand giving a stern yank to whatever was in the general vicinity of the center of my chest. I didn't know what I was feeling when I looked up into his face and saw the complete honesty and openness in his soft earthy green eyes, but I'll be damned if it didn't hurt just a little. It wasn't a bad kind of hurt, though...it actually felt a tiny bit welcome, and if that wasn't a vastly _un_ welcome thing I don't know what would be.

"Where were you? Huh? _Where were you John??"_ Chief was stalking past us toward Saint, that strong square jaw clenched so tight the muscles in his cheeks were tensed and visible. "It shouldn't take you ten damn minutes to get to the scene, we had a situation here!"

Saint wasn't worried about it. "Chill man, we all knew she had it under control. Besides it's Wilson, what's he gonna do?"

"Yeah, she had it under control right up to the point where she lost him twice and nearly got Andy killed."

Andy chimed in with an "I'm fine Chief" and was promptly graced with a scowl that made him snap his mouth shut so hard his teeth clacked together.

"Shut up Andy. And you - " He spun around on me, finger of authority up and in my face. "That was the sloppiest arrest I've seen in seventeen years on the force. Aren't you _the_ decorated, respected, highly experienced Officer Greta Morley, LAPD Division 25? Is that you? Because it's starting to not sound like you."

The sarcasm in his voice was rubbing me all kinds of wrong and I was just about to get my back up good and proper when Andy saved me. "Aw come on Chief, she's out of her element. I thought she did okay."

"You have no opinion here Andy, you're only supposed to be getting coffee and I don't see any coffee."

Oh...oh hell _no,_ he wasn't going to stand there in front of me and rip into the kid who just ran down the perp neither of our out of shape asses had been able to catch. "You shouldn't be yelling at Andy, he sure as hell outpaced you."

"Shut up Morley, you have no opinion here either." He started counting my offenses out on his fingers. "Leaving the vehicle without radioing in the pursuit, deputizing a civilian without permission - yeah, I heard about that - allowing a civilian to do your dirty work, losing your keys - " he held them up in front of my face and shook them - "Deviating from your original assignment, electing to pursue a potentially armed suspect without backup, overlooking a weapon during a search, endangering your illegally deputized deputy...shall I continue?"

God, I felt like I was standing in the principal's office waiting for them to call my mom. "It was a prop gun."

"What did you say?"

"I trust Andy's judgement, if he says she did okay she probably did okay." We all turned and looked at Saint and I made a mental note to pencil in a provisionary pardon next to his name on my list. He shrugged. "Just sayin'."

Chief looked like he'd reached a point in his life where he had just two choices, but since he wasn't in immediate possession of a sword for the hari kari option, he was forced to go with the second one. "Everybody shut up, stop defending her. She disobeyed a direct order to disengage."

Saint started his bike up and pulled his cap down over his ears. "I sorta thought that was a suggestion more than a direct order, boss."

"Not another word. From _anyone!"_ Chief shot a glare around at each of us in turn, then stomped off toward the alley where his Jeep was parked, muttering curses all the way. Saint was giggling as he edged his bike around into a turn and shot me a wink.

"Welcome to Weemeetwa, Officer Morley. We start drinking at four."

**_To be continued..._ **


	10. The Wily Ones

"Whoo hoo, I think somebody's in trouble."

I was barely inside the building before it started up. No surprise there, but I wasn't in the mood - no surprise there either. And, of course, it had to go for the no-surprise trifecta by being the logging truck who opened his mouth.

"Shut up Creeley."

"I think somebody's gonna get shipped back to LA a lot sooner than they thought."

"I think somebody's gonna get their testicles cuffed to the radiator the next time they fall asleep at their desk."

The blonde woman - she didn't seem like a Sarah to me and it was starting to look like she was going to remain "the blonde woman" in my head for the duration of my stay - gave me a thumbs up as Andy escorted Wilson across the room to the holding cell and then just walked off, leaving the door standing open with Wilson sitting dejectedly inside. The guy with the flannel Thermos kicked back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk, shooting a finger gun at the prisoner; he was smiling like this was the best day of his life. "I think this is the most excitement we've had around here since the 4th of July fireworks show when Cree set the Mayor's barn on fire," he giggled gleefully as he threw a threatening look toward Wilson to make him sit his ass back down. He'd been edging slowly toward the open door while we argued and muttered a disappointed _Aw man_ like a toddler busted trying to sneak out of bed after nine.

Creeley was still staring at me with that insufferably smug look that he wore like his own skin, but he held one hand out to point at Cade with his bird finger. "Hey that was planned and it was awesome. And shut up."

Cade started cackling then and I realized he was probably going to be my one consistent and reliable means of distracting Cree. It was obvious they were each other's nemesis and took great pleasure in picking fights with each other over literally anything, an obnoxious mutual trait that I knew I could use to my advantage. Cade in particular seemed to have impeccable timing - so far every time Cree had started in on me, he had drawn the fire toward himself with a snide remark that forced the big idiot to focus his attention on him with the extremely fortunate side effect of making him momentarily forget about me. I couldn't tell yet if it was intentional or if they really had that big of a hard on for irritating each other, but whichever it was, I knew one thing for sure...I'd be keeping Cade on my side. My firm belief had always been that if you can't win captaining your own team, play the two dominant sides against each other and then join forces with whoever comes out on top most often.

Self serving, but in hell there are no morals. I glanced at the detainee I'd just spent all morning chasing and pointed a warning finger at him until he sat back down again.

"I think somebody better go get the town's single functioning brain cell from Wilson, he's obviously finished with it for the day."

Cree's attention snapped back to me like he'd completely forgotten I existed for those few glorious seconds while he and Cade bickered over what exactly had transpired on the 4th of July. "Heh. Did you catch Elsie, girl? I think you should probably sit down and protect your asshole because Chief's gonna be ripping you another one."

 _Girl._ Goddammit he rubbed me fifty shades of wrong.

"I think - "

I didn't get to offer my latest submission for the thought competition, which was a shame because it was a good one with a lot of body part references. Chief marched past us all and stopped a few feet in front of me before snarling "Sit down!!" at Wilson, then wheeled around to jab a finger at my face. "You want to know what _I_ think? I think you're a goddamn curse Morley, we haven't had an incident involving firearms in this town in three years, and the last one was a fucking hunting accident!"

"What? That was a prop gun and what does that have to do with me?!"

"You show up here and things start blowing up!"

"That wasn't my fault!!"

His face was an interesting shade of flushed pink transitioning to red but he didn't even pause to respect his blood pressure. He also didn't step back from me, and he sure as hell didn't stop telling me what he thought of my presence here in his quiet little village of idiots. _"Esti de câlice de tabarnak, c'est pas possible comment que t'es cave"_ whisperedfrom his lips right before he gave his head a hard shake and leaned in for the kill. _"_ _Shut_ up Morley. I don't want you near Andy again, you understand me? If anything happens to him because of you I will personally lock you in the drunk tank and leave you there until your boyfriend comes from D25 to pick you up and take you the hell out of here because I'm not putting up with your shit for a whole year. Are we clear?"

Cree giggled, I swear to god. I glared at him while he elbowed Kevin and stage-whispered, "Boyfriend. Told ya. Gimme my five bucks."

"What do you mean because of _me?_ It's not my fault there's nothing better to do in this place than get cranked up on meth and shoot giraffes and run from the cops. Get a goddamn community center or something, a bowling alley, maybe a skating rink - that sounds just about the right speed for this redneck shithole!!" And then I spun around and screamed "SIT DOWN WILSON!!" because I wasn't about to lose my first and potentially only goddamn relative success story in Weebeestupidville to the collective incompetence of a room full of testosterone junkies. "WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE SHUT THE GODDAMN DOOR ON THAT GODDAMN CELL!!"

The room went silent. From somewhere behind me I heard Creeley mutter "Jesus Christ."

Chief's eyes were so freakishly bright with anger that I almost took a step back. Almost. _Never show fear._ He crooked that finger at me.

"You, in my office. _Now."_

The door banged shut with a loud sort of finality behind me, but it was me doing the slamming. Chief turned around and looked at me for a long few seconds and I swear to god, the raw frustrated anger on that man's face made my already damp jeans go just a bit soggier. I may have briefly entertained a cursed image of him backing me up against the wall and slamming me into it, not even kissing me, just ripping my shirt open while those hot blue eyes burned into my face and his hands moved down to brutally grab whatever he wanted.

Geezus. Losing my temper always had that affect on me. It was dangerous and stupid and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it except try not to let anything irreversible happen until I cooled down, but hellfire if I wasn't having a little bit of a battle with that. Some of my worst mistakes had occurred during tantrums. My entire relationship with Hawk had started as the result of an undeserved reprimand that had pissed me off and ended with the two of us knocking over a shelf full of confiscated heroin in the evidence room while we tore at each other like animals.

I doubted the Weebeedumbasses PD had an evidence room...hell, they barely had a door on the holding cell.

But still.

Why was I just now noticing Chief's hair was sorta curly in that perfect _tug on it during hot sweaty groaning sex_ kind of way? That his eyes were that hot sort of icy blue that could see straight through your clothes to what was quivering underneath? And geezus fuck did I need that stern mouth licking at me somewhere south of my throat...and then south of my bellybutton...

Those broad sturdy shoulders _definitely_ needed my legs draped over them.

I straightened my back and stood up to him to put that unwelcome series of thoughts right the hell out of my head. My job was on the line, because I'd just insulted his entire jurisdiction in addition to my laundry list of sins from the so-called apprehending of that dipshit Wilson as well as the utterly embarrassing failure that the Elsie situation had devolved into. There was no room in this scenario for letting my temper-induced libido make me stupid on top of incompetent.

_My legs over his shoulders and his jeans down just far enough for him to take himself out and -_

"Chief I - "

The Finger of Authority came up again for the third time that day. "I meant what I said about Andy. I'm responsible for him, nothing happens to him on my watch. Are we clear on that?"

The cursed image vanished in a poof of confusion.

"What's so important about Andy?"

_"Are we clear on that?"_

"Yes Sir. Clear."

He held eye contact with me for far longer than either of us felt comfortable with, it was obvious by the way his breathing shifted and my fingers started twitching involuntarily about eleven seconds into the staredown. But neither of us were about to be the first to look away, that was obvious too - until he finally shook his head and looked down at the floor for a second before turning to go behind his desk, putting a safe distance between us that felt like a really good idea in light of what was floating around in my skull. His voice was oddly quiet when he started talking again, like he didn't really want to hear what was about to come out of his own mouth. "Listen to me close Morley, I'm only going to say this once. Out of all of us in this station, hell out of everyone in this _town,_ Andy is the one person that has to be protected at all costs. I'm not telling you why so don't ask - and don't ask him either, he's not allowed to talk. Just trust me when I say there is a reason he's in this station, surrounded by cops, ten hours a day."

Not what I'd expected to hear, but better than being handed my walking papers and summarily court marshaled in the back alley while still entertaining dirty thoughts about my boss. "Okay, so he's a small time drug lord who sold on someone else's territory and now there's a switchblade somewhere with his name on it, and he's the mayor's kid or something, right? So there's a paycheck and a promotion in it for you as long as he stays alive. I've seen it before, I know the drill." I glanced back at the window where little slices of Creeley and Kevin were visible between the slats. "Seems a bit stereotypical, but okay."

"Don't go trying to figure it out Morley, it's not your business. Your business is to serve your time out here until the honchos in LA forget what you did and your boss can sneak you back in. That's _all_ you're going to do while you're here."

"Honchos, wow. There's a word I haven't heard since Starsky and Hutch went off the air."

He sighed, and I might have felt just the tiniest bit sorry for him. He seemed tired and he obviously hadn't signed on for this babysitting job willingly. Somebody on the other side of the door yelled _SIT DOWN WILSON!!_ and I swear I saw Chief's soul take one more step toward the light. The look he gave me didn't even have the energy or strength of will to be pleading. "Are you going to defy me every damn second of the next 364 days, Morley?"

"Probably."

He nodded, settling those unnerving blue eyes onto some point to the immediate left of my face. I could hear the mouthbreathers at the window scrambling to disappear. And then he nodded again, like a man accepting a fate he wasn't looking forward to.

"Go do some paperwork. Get Wilson processed and then take that damn gun back to Miss Amelia at the theater group. And get that niaiseux llama out to Hanrahan's by quitting time or the old man's going to be all over my ass and there isn't enough room for him today."

The barely contained frustration in his voice and on his face were enough to make me feel sort of bad for adding to the guy's problems, but at least I hadn't tackled him and made him my anger bitch. And out of all the things he'd just said to me only one word demanded any degree of attention from my hungover head.

"Niaseux?"

He tossed a distracted glance at me as he settled into his squeaky old leather chair with a heavy sigh. "Huh? Oh, uh...stupid, it means stupid."

"In what language?"

"What?" His attention wasn't on me anymore; it seemed unlikely I'd be getting it back without irritating him to the point of no return, so I shook my head to let him know he didn't need to answer and headed for the relative sanctuary of the door. But some perverse little part of me wouldn't allow for a quiet retreat without at least one more excuse to see those bright blue eyes acknowledge my presence. If we weren't going to be amicable colleagues for the next year, we were sure as hell going to be attentive adversaries.

"If you don't mind me asking Sir, where in the entirety of Little Women does the script call for a firearm?"

Chief was sitting there looking like his will to live had fallen out somewhere along the way and he was too exhausted to look for it. He put one hand up in the air in a _Who the hell knows_ gesture, then motioned toward the door to scoot me out. I had one more question for him though, something that had been bothering me ever since Andy had told me in an almost childlike voice in that icy alley that he liked me.

“Deputy Burns. Is he slow?”

“He still hasn’t brought me the coffee I asked for this morning, if that’s what you mean. And he's not Deputy Burns, he's Andy the station gopher and you're not to use him for anything but that, you got me?”

He had that _no wiggle room_ tone in his voice again, so I didn't push him. A year was a long time to be on someone's bad side. I opened the door just as someone was yelling at Wilson to sit his ass down again.

"Yes Sir."

The first morning of my first day of incarceration at the Weemeetwa PD was officially over, if the big old public-school style clock ticking asthmatically on the wall over Sarah's head could be trusted. Noon plus seven minutes. Wilson's paperwork was looming over me and I hadn't processed him yet, but he was tucked semi-safely away in the holding cell with Cade staring threateningly at him over his Thermos to keep him from walking out. He could simmer for a little while until I got to him. There was nothing in my stomach but the dregs of the coffee I'd had at the Star and Shield that morning and the unsettled quivery sensation that little ill advised fantasy about Chief had left behind, both of which were starting to kick off a nauseating hunger I was going to have to address soon if I wanted to keep functioning. And the headache-induced queasiness from my hangover was working in tandem with it all to make me far crankier than I needed to be.

No point in setting off an already lit powder keg by hurling horny hangry attitude at a room full of blatant drama junkies or giving in to the more prurient side of my somewhat volatile nature. Not on my first day, when I was already batting a solid zero and had sharpied a big fucking bullseye on my own forehead.

In a few days, maybe.

I found my way to the break room and was simultaneously disappointed and not surprised to find exactly zero by way of vending machines. Not even a coffee pot, which was...appalling. The only actual break room appliance this godforsaken place seemed to possess was the dinged up old microwave Andy had removed from my desk. I tried to remember if the pizza inside it looked worth the risk.

"What do you guys do at lunch time?" The air in the room had changed - that weird electrically charged feeling the air gets when a pissed off person enters the vicinity - and I turned to see who had followed me in.

Goddammit. Cree.

"Never mind, I'll figure it out for myself."

"Good job."

Big sigh. The smarmy grin dancing in his eyes told me he was loaded for bear, hairtriggered, and full-on ready to provoke me into getting my ass fired. A quick internal count to five put a false layer of calm on my kneejerk impulse to kick a Neaderthal in the balls and I shot him a quick fake smile in response.

"Thank you but what for."

"Makin' Chief revert to Sasq on your first day. Usually takes a lot more than that to make him use those words."

"It's one of my many skills." The big creep leaned back on the doorframe and hooked his hands behind his head like he planned on getting comfortable there, staring at me as I went about my business. But he wasn't saying anything, other than a half good natured chuckle that registered something close to actual authentic amusement. I shot him a sideways glance and immediately felt appalled at my own brain, wrapping itself around the simple and unwelcome fact that Cree was sorta good looking in an untamed filthy mountain man kind of way.

Fuck that noise. No way was the residual horniness that had followed me out of Chief's office going to splash onto the undercarriage of this particular logging truck. _Geezus Greta, you got laid less than twelve hours ago. Not him not him not him. Put it away._

"Yeah, what was that about? That stuff he said."

"Which part?"

"Any of it."

He absently pulled his shaggy hair back with his hands and knotted it behind his head with a rubber band he took off the doorknob. "Pretty sure I heard a Jesus fucking Christ in there."

"Great."

I reached for the door of a little icebox looking thing in the corner while the big thug moved to lean against the single two-seater table, making it drag a few inches across the tile floor with an ear cringing screech that sent a full-body shudder straight through me. Asshole knew I had a headache. I shifted into ignoring his unwelcome presence and pulled the door open to find a few empty wrappers and a scattering of half eaten leftovers that had probably surpassed edibility months ago. A single can of soda was pushed far to the back.

"That's the communal fridge," he interrupted as he laid down on the table like the goddamn mannerless heathen he obviously was. "You put something in there, it's fair game to whoever wants it."

"What if I bring something I don't want to share, but it needs to be refrigerated?"

He shrugged disinterestedly. "You better hope you get to it before anyone else when lunchtime rolls around."

"If that's the case then I'm gonna finish off this Coke."

"No no no, the Coke is Andy's," he interjected, hopping up quickly and snatching the can out of my hand. "He's hypoglycemic, he needs his sugar."

"Andy is _hypoglycemic_."

"Yeah. Gets the shakes and everything. It's ugly." He set the can carefully back into the fridge and shut the door. The protective concern he seemed to feel toward the kid was weirdly heartwarming, but I'd been a part of this team for less than five hours and I could already see who the wily ones were.

"Have you ever considered the fact that maybe he's just trying to keep you guys from drinking his Coke?"

A look of such confusion and hard thinking came across Cree's face that I would have laughed if I wasn't feeling so nauseous from the booze headache. He had his mouth open to most likely make an attempt at disputing my insinuation when something I could only describe as a pack of wolves barking bloody murder blasted in from the hallway. 

"What is that?!"

"That'd be Hobo."

"Hobo? The dog? That's _one_ dog making that godawful noise??"

He shrugged again, refusing to move when I pushed past him to look into the hallway. "He's a good pup."

"That doesn't sound like a good pup, that sounds like a hellhound chasing an escaped soul back into Hades."

"What do you think we keep him around for?"

My retort was interrupted by Andy running past me, down the hall and out into the main lobby with a huge grey mass of muscle and hair chasing after him. I watched through the glass divider wall as he launched himself up onto Sarah's desk and stood there, bent at the shoulders to keep his head from hitting the ceiling, while something that looked like a cross between a wolfhound and Cerberus himself ran circles around the desk, snarling and jumping at his legs.

 _"That's_ Hobo - ?"

"Yup."

"Why has he got Andy treed?"

Cree whistled to get Andy's attention. "Swizzlestick, you carryin'?"

Andy pulled one leg up and balanced like a gigantic flamingo on the desk while the dog snapped at his untied boot laces. "About a quarter ounce, yeah."

Creeley sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Cade, arrest Andy again."

"Oh hell no," Cade argued, throwing both hands up to excuse himself from the proceedings and wincing like he'd just been asked to change a diaper. “I arrested him Tuesday. It’s your turn.”

“No way, Tuesday was me and the fucker bit me. It’s your turn today.”

I looked back and forth from one of them to the other, trying desperately to follow what might have been the least followable line of conversation I’d ever been forced to listen to. “Andy bit you or the dog bit you?”

Andy yelped, flinching as the beast snarled and lunged at his ankles. "I said I was sorry.“

There are no words to accurately describe either the situation playing out around me or the way my grasp on reality reacted to it by just fucking letting go, but I'd been here for all of a half a workday and had already settled into what I could only describe as an unquestioning sort of acceptance. It was born entirely of necessity, the kind of direly essential survival mode that human beings slip into when they're freezing to death on a mountainside or going down on a sinking ship and know there's no getting out of this alive.

"WILSON SIT YOUR ASS DOWN!!"

I wish I could say I jumped when Cade yelled, but my nerves had already vacated the premises.

_**To be continued...** _


	11. I Need A Quarter For The Swear Jar and All I've Got Is A Dime

I did Wilson's paperwork on an empty stomach. There was really nothing else for me to do unless I wanted to go back out in the growing storm and hunt Elsie some more, which was a no - while trying to find my way back to that weird ass frilly pink donut shop, which was also a no - and the fact that paperwork seemed a better option was a shining testament to how I felt about the whole llama drama in general and lacy tablecloths in particular.

Not just a no, but a _solid_ no on both. I had graduated from the police academy with specialized training in driving fast and apprehending drug dealers and weapons smugglers in moving vehicles, not running on ice and catching large hairy mammals and dumbass poachers in inappropriate footwear. I wasn't even sure llamas _were_ mammals, to be completely honest.

Wilson either for that matter.

And there wasn't a single pair of shoes in the unpacked boxes sitting in the middle of my kitchen that were made for this kind of weather. An abbreviated version of my life was in those big brown cartons, but I hadn't been able to bring myself to do more than slit one open and take a quick peek inside. I already knew what was in them.

Nothing of any real importance. And definitely no snow shoes.

It just looked like stuff. Funny how an entire life can be reduced to a pile of junk thrown into a box and shipped across the country without much fanfare.

People too, for that matter.

The empty grumbling in my gut was making the idea of sugary donuts and bitter coffee sound worse each time my touchy stomach executed an indelicate barrel roll to bitch at me again. And to add unforgivable insult to horrific injury, all that chasing after Wilson had put my back to aching right in the spot where my spine had been compressed by the protective roll cage of the car I had driven into two oncoming Escalades six short months ago. Four grueling months of physical therapy to get normal again and a damn foot pursuit had put me right back into the muscle spasm hell that had introduced me to the comforts of Southern Comfort, and that was an addiction I was playing a risky game of teeter-totter with. Anyone who took a good hard look at me would know what was standing in front of them, playing an unconvincing round of _Look at the normal person, nothing to see here, definitely not a ticking time bomb with a hair trigger and emotional baggage to boot!_

Hawk knew. My department back home knew. My brother knew and my therapist knew. It was highly likely Chief knew too. My little self-medicating drinking habit was going to set off an inescapable series of events one of these days, if it hadn't already. Irish boy was still holding steady, but we were only halfway through day one...there would be so many opportunities over the course of the next year for him to pop his jaw open and spill the unsavory facts unless I was super damn careful.

Or just took the safe route and found someone to help me dispose of the body.

God, I hated all the moving parts involved in having a second party privy to your bad behavior.

 _Bad behavior._ Why I thought I was any more to blame than he was for that particular night of debauchery was a question for the ages, but there you had it. Patriarchal conditioning with a healthy dose of self loathing sprinkled on top, because why the hell not. _Boys will be boys, but girls should know better._

Geezus.

But I had other more pressing matters at the moment than dismantling centuries of sexual oppression, the first of which involved an uncoated aspirin and my lifelong inability to swallow anything dry.

I knew there was nothing in the break room to drink except Andy's Coke, and since I'm not that kind of evil I decided the bathroom tap would be the preferable option over asking Cade for a swig of whatever was in his Thermos. I needed that Tylenol worse than Chief needed a Xanax and this day wasn't making me any solid promises or halfass wishes to get better. I could do it, I knew...I could handle whatever this lunatic asylum hurled at me and do it with astonishing aplomb, if I actively chose to and fate eventually lobbed a break or two in my general direction. It had to. Nobody had as long a streak of bad luck as I'd had without the universe heaving an annoyed sigh and tipping them a sympathy break, because that kind of lopsided cosmic grudge would indicate I'd done something _really_ bad.

Like accidentally killing my partner.

Heavy stress on accidental. Joe's death was a rotten roll of the dice, that much was for certain. I'd read the reports multiple times, from the scene analytics to the rundown on the vehicle's maintenance records for the previous year, looking for anything that could have gone wrong aside from what actually did. Anything I could have done differently, anything I could have seen coming. The consistency of the checkmarks was frustrating. After a while I was certain I would feel better if I _could_ find something to indicate I was to blame. Something to give me a valid reason to hate myself as much as I did, because that level of self flagellating vitriol was exhausting.

Something other than the obvious fact that it wouldn't have happened if I had followed Hawk's order to halt pursuit.

I suppose that was enough.

But I still had a stupid persecution complex where the universe slapping me around was concerned, which was why I was more offended than startled when I stepped into the hallway and was met by the hellhound charging out from what I assumed to be the bathroom, fangs bared, snarling and lunging at me like a rabid badger hopped up on cocaine and Red Bull.

"What the fuck is that thing doing in here?!"

Creeley leaned into the hall, just a head and shoulders attached to a malicious grin with zero intention of lending assistance. "That's Hobo's office. Show some respect, he's a decorated officer."

The dog took another dive at me, blocking the doorway to the bathroom and increasing the volume of its crazed barking till I was backed up against the opposite wall. "Decorated for what??"

"He sniffed out Weemeetwa's biggest drug dealer, flushed 'em right out and brought him to us. Unfortunately it was Andy over there."

Cade's head appeared at the end of the hall next, poking out from behind Creeley's gigantic body. He shot me a half sympathetic frown and then giggled the slightly unhinged giggle of a five year old who's just loaded the toilet up to the seat with Legos and flushed it. "Remember when we came in that Monday?"

"Oh god, geezus that was bad." They both turned to me like I'd just joined the conversation and Cree raised his voice so I could hear him over the barking that nobody was doing anything to stop. "It was over the weekend and Andy had to stay in the storage room until Monday. Kid was half starved and dehydrated by the time Pearly got here and let his ass out."

While they cackled over the memories I inched my way down the corridor along the wall till I was out of Hobo's range. Cade was the lesser ridiculously oversized of the pair of them, so I gave him a shove and tried to pretend like the demon dog guarding the toilet hadn't just scared the piss right back up into my kidneys as I squeezed past him into the dubious safety of the main office. "Well I'm glad someone around here is actually competent at their job, but he won't let me use the bathroom."

"Told ya, that's his personal space. Go next door to the taxidermist."

I was staring at Cree with a vague question mark in my head tacked onto the end of the sentence _Can I kill him in a police station in front of three cops_ and decided it was just easier to allow myself to be distracted by Cade's shrill whistle than try to find out the answer. There was also more than just a little bit of venom in my voice because full bladders and empty stomachs do not mix with any degree of civility, and he was whistling at me, not at the dog. _"What."_

"Don't forget the dime." He flipped a silver coin at me. "And bring it back."

I snatched it out of the air, confused and pretty sure I shouldn't ask, but somehow the backward logic of this place was giving me an arbitrary need to question everything just to see how stupid things could actually get. "How do I bring it back if I pay the guy with it?"

"It's like Aldi's. He'll give it back to you after you're done."

Of course. "I haven't decided yet if you guys are stupid or just really _really_ bored."

The blonde woman gave a harsh humorless little laugh from her desk without bothering to look up. "Rest assured it's an unhealthy dose of both."

Saint blew in through the door as I was heading for it in what I figured was my last chance to get out before my bladder started audibly screaming, and once again I was sort of astounded at the fact that he was one of the roughest looking men I'd ever seen in my life. Rougher than Creeley, and that was saying something. How he and Chief - by all accounts one of the most stupidly handsome males I'd ever laid eyes on - could possibly be _brothers_ was a mystery that I would have loved to discuss with their mother if I didn't have to pee so bad. I'd called Los Angeles home for most of my life and had been exposed to both the scariest criminals and most beautiful celebrities in the northern hemisphere, but the two Davis boys right here in Weenietitfuck had both categories beat while still managing to look enough like each other to pass as believable siblings.

Their mother had to be hiding something.

And Saint, Sinjin, John, whatever the hell his name was at the moment, was standing in the doorway shaking the ice and snow off himself like a ragged dog that had been bred for fighting but somehow found itself pulling a sled instead. The tattoos on his neck came into view as he unlooped his scarf and twisted it into a rattail, popping Andy on the ass with it as he passed with a bag of dog food. "Hey, the cast iron bitch from LA is still here," he proclaimed in a cheerful Captain Obvious sort of way. He didn't really seem all that surprised and slipped in a conspiratorial little wink while he settled in on the corner of Sarah's desk like it was his assigned spot. "Kinda figured you'd be on a plane back to LA by now."

"Nope, I'm on my way to the taxidermist."

"Ah, you get the dime?"

I held it up.

Creeley shot him a look that said he still wasn't happy about being left out of the informational loop concerning my arrival and I made a bet with myself on what his next words were going to be. Ten to nothing he was going back to the same argument from that morning.

"Were you really expectin' her?"

Bingo.

"Yeah, Chief told me she was coming." The wicked little grin twitching on Saint's lips made it clear just how much he was loving being on the antagonist side of this particular discussion. It also left no speculation open as to whether or not he was going to dig in and keep it going until there was bloodshed. "Why didn't he tell you?"

"Nobody tells me nothin'."

As much fun as this was no doubt going to be, I really needed to get my dime to the taxidermist sooner rather than later. I grabbed up my coat and started for the door again - but couldn't keep my damn mouth shut for the seven lousy seconds it took me to get there.

"People don't usually talk to creatures like you, they throw fish and try to get you to clap."

There was a long handful of heavily silent seconds during which it was obvious Creeley didn't get it, then Cade couldn't control himself anymore and started making noises like a sea lion in between uncontrolled peals of laughter. A minute later Cree's eyebrows went up and he hurled a coffee mug at him. “Funny. You’re funny Morley.” 

“She is funny," Saint said from Sarah's desk. "I’d bang her.” 

Even though absolutely nothing in my short history with these people gave me any reason to be shocked, my mouth still dropped open. Cree gave me a lascivious sort of look-over and flashed a disgustingly suggestive leer at me while I struggled to hold my rising temper. “Oh god me too.”

And then destiny came for my ass in the form of a stupidly tall longhaired stoner, standing in the corner distractedly drinking his Coke and uttering two words that would dictate the terms of my future in Weecantbenormalville.

“I have.”

If I'd had time to react before the rest of the room turned to look at Andy, I'd have undoubtedly done something, though for the life of me I don't know what.

Drop dead probably.

But of all the things a room full of bored cretins could latch onto, the one thing that could obliterate a human being in its entirety would never fail to be what they chose. Every head in the room spun around to look at the oblivious Irishman as he nonchalantly wandered over to tie his shoelace by the open door to the holding cell, where Wilson was sitting on the cot with an expression of widening glee spreading across his stupid face.

And then it hit everyone at once, and the reaction was like a tsunami sweeping across the mainland. It looked a lot like an old Star Trek episode where everyone regains consciousness at the exact same moment and looks at each other in confusion before some dumb redshirt mumbles "What the fuck was that, Captain?"

Or something to that effect. I never was a huge Star Trek fan.

Cade was the first to speak, though it was just something like a delayed "Whaa-haa- _aaat??"_ squealed around a delighted grin as he spun in his chair to face me. Cree stood there just staring at me, that malicious little half smile settled solidly on his face, unblinking and unspeaking as I groaned and dropped my coat on my desk. Saint was staring at Andy.

So close. I'd been _so close_ to being out the door, on my way to the taxidermist's with my dime. Wilson was launching into a narrative about how nobody should ever bet against Andy in the Spring Thaw contest, whatever the hell that was, and Kevin had appeared from another room to stand silently in the doorway giving us all that expressionless look that somehow conveyed both condescension and a complete lack of comprehension. Sarah put her phone down and sat back to watch, crossing her hands on her stomach to twiddle her thumbs.

Cree's mouth opened then and I knew I was done for.

"Swizzlestick tagged another one? Goddamn, boy's pecker must've unionized."

I think I must have been throat-deep in one of the opening stages of grief, because it took me a long time to realize he wasn't talking to me. He wasn't even looking at me anymore - his attention was firmly on Andy, who was busily transferring a twenty pound bag of Mountain Dog kibble into a plastic bin in the corner and not noticing that he was now the center of attention in the room. He didn't seem to realize what he'd done and there was literally nothing left for me to do but just ride it out and hope some impossible miracle kicked up a typhoon and wiped out the entire damn town before the collective fascination turned back on me again.

They were all to the last man focusing on Shag & Bag Burns.

It was an unlikely stroke of luck and there was no way in hell I wasn't going to grab it with both hands and run like my ass was on fire. Digging into an attack stance seemed like a viable option; if there were going to be dead bodies after this engagement, at least mine was going to be on top of the pile and not crushed at the bottom with the first to go down. My head veered back and forth for a few seconds between throwing Andy under the bus and simply redirecting the entire event toward the questionable character of our co-workers and leaving the pair of us and our drunken indiscretions out of it, and in the end it was an easy decision to make.

I picked my coat up for the third time and started to put it on with the full intention of walking out and leaving them to it. Andy could fend for himself. Nothing in me suspected that he'd done it maliciously, but it was still a slip with potentially fatal ramifications and I was too hungry and was sloshing around with too full of a bladder to waste any more time being bothered with it. And I had a parting shot that would absolve us both long enough for a smooth escape, because I didn't think for one second that any of them had enough of an attention span to ignore a bone tossed into the middle of their dogpile.

“Excuse me while I step out for some air before I keel over dead - there's a noxious cloud of rampant sexism choking out all the oxygen in this office.”

Creeley, bless his easily distractable heart, veered right off the conversational trail like a huge slathering dog spotting a squirrel and headed off after his shiny new target, balls to the wall in the direction I'd thrown it. “Heh. She said chokin' out.”

And Kevin followed, taking even more heat off what easily could have been a dumpster fire for the history books. He turned that unsettling stony stare on Cree and slowly brought a scolding finger up to shake it at him. “Hey, no swearing on our Christian server.”

“What? She said it. Repetition don’t count.” 

_“Doesn’t_ count.” 

“Yeah, like I said.”

Cade was still stifling a case of the giggles so fierce that it was shaking his whole body in spasms of barely contained mirth; I leveled my most threatening glare at him and he threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender that told me all I needed to know. _I'm loving the hell out of every second of this shitshow but I'm far from the biggest dick in here. Chill, we're good._

It was a familiar gesture that gave me a hard twinge in the feels. Joe used to do the same exact thing every time the briefing room dissolved into a lack of respect for the female who dared to be in charge. He might have howled right along with them, but the second it was enough, he was back on my side and ready to take them all on if I wanted or needed his assistance. It was heartening knowing one person in the room - even _this_ room - could be counted on to know when it was time to stop...because Wilson was hammering Andy with a barrage of inquiries ranging from whether or not I wore Victoria's Secret to the decibel rating of my moans the closer I got to orgasm.

And Andy, finally cluing in to the fact that he'd let something slip that was going to rain hellfire down on me for a long time to come, stepped inside the cell and dropped a handful of dog food on the floor between Wilson's feet, then whistled.

The next few seconds reminded me a whole lot of the time a raccoon got into the briefing room back home during morning assignments. Hobo came running down the hall, snarling and barking, and barreled into the cell as Andy jumped onto the barred door and swung himself out. He slammed the door shut and pushed Cade's desk over in front of it to barricade it while Wilson leaped onto the cot and started shrieking like a woman, the hellhound jumping and biting at his legs while he tried to climb into the bar-covered windowsill. Cade snatched his Thermos off the repurposed desk and rolled back to his usual spot without ever getting up out of his chair. Sarah sat back and laughed, shaking her head like she'd seen all this a million times before but still found it amusing enough to stop working for, and Cree got up in Kevin's face and started rattling off every bad word he could pull out of his impressively filthy vocabulary while the quiet mountain stood there unblinking, just waiting for him to stop and probably keeping a mental tally sheet of every verbal infraction of the cursing rule.

My work here was done.

I buttoned my coat, unduly proud of myself for successfully derailing this particular clusterfuck and turning it into one that had nothing to do with me - and as I was turning to leave with my dime tucked safely in my pocket I saw Chief out of the corner of my eye. He was standing in the door to his office, shaking his head like a firefighter who's had to make the call that the building is too far gone and can now only watch the inferno rage and keep it from spreading.

We met eyes for a long hard second, and in that horrifying moment when he raised one eyebrow at me, I knew he'd heard what Andy said.

I added another word to Kevin's Christian server infraction sheet on my way out.

_To be continued..._


	12. Just Two Things

The mood in the room when I got back from the taxidermist was something in between a community center full of seniors dying to discuss what just happened on All My Children and a cabal of piranha circling a skinnydipper. I flipped Cade the dime and tried hard not to look anyone in the eye, particularly Sarah - of all of them, she was the only one whose stare held something other than high amusement and a willingness to humiliate another human being for cheap laughs. No, the looks she was serving were more along the lines of the slightly bored disappointment you'd see on a family photographer's face when that one kid keeps poking his tongue out and making everyone have to start over. I hadn't really assumed we would be buddies based simply on the fact that we shared the same gender-determining set of chromosomes, but an allyship would probably have been nice considering what we were both up against.

I'd no doubt flushed any chance of winning her sympathy just about the time Andy opened his mouth.

So much for female solidarity. I'd been in town for a day and everybody already had enough on me to draw their own conclusions about my character or pathetic lack thereof.

But to be honest, as afternoons go, my first at the Weepissourpants PD could have gone a lot worse. I was saved by the oddly heartening fact that Creeley was an idiot with an attention span even smaller than his brain, followed closely by the very reassuring revelation that Cade could keep his mouth shut when the situation warranted it and Kevin could be counted on to deem verbal infractions more important than whatever line of conversation housed them. And Andy, bless his lanky ass, was kept busy running errands for most of the day but would suddenly appear every half hour or so, stare blankly around the room for a few seconds, mutter _Oh yeah_ and then leave again.

In short, I was surrounded by a bunch of saving graces doing double time as a room full of problems.

I could work with this. What I _couldn't_ work with was the fact that sooner or later one of them - likely Cree - would have a eureka moment and remember what Andy said, and a whole new brand of stupidity would begin with great gusto and the sort of gleeful disrespect that only isolated mountain men living rough with other mountain men could muster. I was used to the classically misogynistic boys club that was the LAPD, not this kindergarten full of unsupervised problem children.

But like I've said before and I hold to it to this day - fast learner, quick adapter. A year was a long damn time to put up with what was probably coming, but I had nothing to lose here...rising above it all was no longer on my personal agenda.

Nope.

My intention now was to give what I got and be the last man standing, or at least be that person who walks away at the end while explosions go off cinematically behind them...and god help this twisted little fairytale town if that meant leaving a flaming swath of corpses clutching their gonads in my wake.

Wilson was processed somewhere around two o'clock that afternoon and spent the rest of the day bitching about his uncle being a lawyer while I made phone calls around town asking if any of the local business owners had spotted our absconded moose. Elsie was still at large and Chief had given me a direct order to have her home by five.

I had an obvious problem with direct orders, but god help me, this was one I intended to at least _try_ to obey. And that was the rub, because the station was curiously vacant for most of the afternoon, leaving nobody to either help me or go with me, and it was established fact that I didn't even know how to get to my own house. Kevin wandered in and out at random intervals, humming to himself until he spotted me and went stone still wherever he stood, staring at me like I was something he'd never seen before. Chief was behind a closed door for the better part of the day, but had rushed through pulling his coat on at about ten to four and disappeared without a word. Saint took Andy and the two of them vanished soon after that, and Creeley and Sarah argued about hockey scores for a while before he strolled over to my desk, rapped his knuckles on the wood, then fired off a finger gun at me when I looked up. He winked, made a weird clicking noise with his mouth, and walked off shaking his head.

I had no clue what the hell that was all about, but he hadn't stuck around to elaborate.

Which left me and Sarah to babysit Wilson.

Nobody had bothered either disputing or confirming Wilson's claim about his uncle, but when late afternoon rolled around and he was still sitting in the holding cell, I reached the logical conclusion that he was lying. I sat down on Cade's desk and held my hand out.

"Share."

He handed over the bag of walnuts he was eating and gave me a highly amused and deeply lopsided grin.

"You're gonna love it here."

"No, I'm really not."

"Aw, give it time. They're a good bunch."

"No, they're really not."

He shot me a sly side eye like he knew something I didn't, but I wasn't the least bit interested in figuring out what it might be. I was cranky and hungry and completely disoriented by pretty much my entire current situation, but mostly I was feeling more than just a little bit like a fish flopping around on the bank of the river, trying to get where I needed to be but running out of air and covering no ground at all. "I guess you're here for the night, Chief never told me what to do with you."

"Standard procedure dictates you leave at quittin' time and I'll lock up on my way out."

I inspected the door to the cell. Not even a deadbolt. "You're not joking are you."

"No ma'am. And I'd just like to say in behalf of the non-law abiding part of the Weemeetwa citizenry that that was a damn fine pursuit you offered up today."

"That was all Andy and his two dozen legs."

"Naw, I could see you bringing up the flank. And Chief huffin' along, he couldn't let a woman show him up - I haven't seen him run in at least two years. You're gonna be good for this department I think."

"I may be good for it but I'm not sure how good it's going to be for me."

"Wait and see, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

And then he sat there smiling at me with that sure look on his face, like some all-seeing oracle outside the temple that hands out fortune-cookie prophecies to anyone who'll toss them a quarter. I would have requested more enlightenment, but the first one was obviously free and I didn't have a quarter for another. I didn't even have a dime, I'd given that back to Cade.

"Got any idea where Chief went? I've got a kitchen full of boxes to unpack and I'd like to get out of here if I could." 

"He's most likely out back."

"Out back?"

"Yeah, out back, like you go through the door over there and circle around behind the building. That's out back."

I handed his walnuts back to him, bone tired and sore from all the running and the lingering hangover and the jolting repeated shock of implausibility after implausibility lining up to flip me the bird while simultaneously slapping me upside the skull. My hip joints were starting to burn and I had no idea if it was from the physical exertion of the chase or from something I'd done with Andy that I was going to remember with regret later. And there was no indication anywhere that all of it wasn't going to just play again on repeat tomorrow, so I gave the place a weary glance as I gathered up my coat and bag and headed for the relative sanctuary of anywhere but here. Wilson gave me a little salute and I'd be lying through my teeth if I didn't confess to starting to halfway like the guy.

"Don't forget to lock up." 

It was snowing again and getting dark while I made my way down the hill behind the station to the iced-over back lot, slipping and sliding and likely looking every inch the city fool these hicks no doubt took me for. Ten to five in the afternoon and the sun was already going down, or at least I assumed it was - it was sort of difficult to pinpoint its exact location through the hazy cloud cover that had had it looking like night for most of the day. This place was a whole other planet in its own galaxy, in sloppy orbit around Satan's asshole.

Chief was out in the middle of the ice, knocking a little black puck around with a hockey stick. In the soft fluttering light from the streetlamp that was trying to kick on he looked younger than he probably was, quickfooting on the ice like a slightly inebriated goalie, slicing a spray of wet top layer across my shoes when he slid to a stop in front of me and flashed me a smile that looked every bit as exhausted as I felt.

“You’re the first guy I ever met who keeps a hockey stick in his car.”

He circled around slowly, tapping the puck back and forth between his skates. "There’s two things to do in this town Morley,” he said, fog billowing from his mouth when he paused to look up at the sky. “Fuck and play hockey.”

I didn’t have any trouble believing him on that. What I _did_ have trouble believing was what came out of my mouth without my permission a second later as he knocked the ice out of a skate blade with the handle of his stick and looked up at me with one eye squinted shut. My brain hung up the out for lunch sign and handed the keys to my crotch, and just like that we were off to the stupidity races.

“Which one are we gonna do?”

Geezus _fuck_ what the hell was wrong with me.

He was amused, I could tell, eyeing me suspiciously but not without just enough smugness to give me one of those all over body shivers that I couldn’t entirely blame on the cold. Those goddamn hot blue eyes drifted lazily down the front of my woefully inadequate Stay-Puft parka and stopped somewhere around the third snap. “You any good at blocking?”

“Depends what kind of blocking we’re talking about.”

He laughed the gently wicked laugh of a muse traipsing drunk and naked down off Mount Olympus, I swear to god, while I ended my life a thousand different ways inside my head. _This man has the power to send you home or consign you to a fate worse than foot patrol in a school zone, don't piss him off and don't make him think you're stupid and for fuck's sake don't throw yourself naked under his skates_. But a really poorly thought out line of reasoning was filtering through the fog being generated by my libido, one that was working hard to convince me I had a shot at a free pass if I cozied up and settled in a bit. He could make things easy on me just as easily as he could fill my upcoming year with every crappy llama-chasing shit job that came down the pike. There was no justifiable reason why I shouldn't aim for the first option.

That plus damned if there wasn't something about him that set my nethers to clenching up. He gave me a sideways look that might as well have ripped my clothes right off my body, but it was mercifully tempered with that insufferable little chuckle that was still just barely audible.

“Look Morley, I’m not going to go to bed with you so let’s just get that off the table right now.”

Oh...well if _that_ wasn't equal amounts ego-deflating embarrassment and perverse challenge I'd be hard pressed to come up with anything that was. I may or may not have stared him down, standing my ground on shaky knees and wondering exactly what the hell was happening here. I'd laid eyes on this guy for the first time less than eight hours ago and spoken to him all of twice and we were already daring each other to see who would be the first to get stupid...except Chief already had the upper hand and had drawn his line in the snow.

A line I was debating stepping across with a bold brainless impunity.

What the fuck was wrong with me? I'd had sex - really _great_ sex, what I could recall of it - the previous night and should have been good for a while on that front. Strictly speaking I didn't need anything from Chief except gainful employment for the next twelve or so months and consistent use of a vehicle to keep me out of that damn stationhouse as much as possible during that time.

And yet here I was, all but flinging myself at him with a Durex packet hanging out of my mouth.

I knew better than this. Hawk and I had pulled the whole workplace sex thing off with a fairly respectable amount of success, but it hadn't come without a nervous little price tag that wasn't even doing me any good now. He had shipped me off without much trepidation and zero hesitation. And now I was standing here on the ice in Minnefuckensoda flirting with my new boss, mentally yelling _No!_ and smacking myself on the nose with a rolled up newspaper while I watched this ridiculously handsome male skate around the frozen lot, chasing a little rubber disc for no obvious reason.

I didn't even really like the guy yet. I hadn't known him long enough to hinge any particular emotion onto where he was concerned. And as I watched him slide gracefully around on the ice like he'd been born with skates on his feet, an unsettling realization about myself took bitter root in my head. Was I one of those cringey females who habitually latched onto male authority figures with the intention of sidestepping all the unfair odds that were automatically stacked against women in the workplace?

Was that what had attracted me to Hawk?

Was it what was attracting me to Chief?

It was an ugly thought, so I put it away. I'd made it as far as I had on my own merit, I knew that for a fact. The thing with Hawk would have happened if he'd been the food truck guy and I'd been a secretary down the street.

Wouldn't it...?

Okay, likely not.

Either way, it was going to be a moral struggle to keep it in my pants with Chief, I could feel it in my bones even though it had _bad idea_ scribbled on it in such big letters that there wasn't much space left to write it a second time for emphasis. Messing around with the boss of that goddamn playpen full of rowdy toddlers was against a whole book full of rules that somebody definitely needed to get busy writing.

But we weren't inside the station at the moment, and my workplace ethic had never been that rock solid to begin with.

Maybe I was unnerved and overcompensating. Maybe I was trying desperately to mark some territory in a place where I had no claim to anything and no way to rise above the condescension of everyone around me. Maybe I was testing the waters by ignoring the riptide warning signs and all the beady little crocodile eyes poking just above the surface watching me jump in feet first.

Maybe I was trying to establish a small bit of dominance over the current dominant presence in my life.

Maybe I was doing a lot of stupid things in the hope that one of them would end up somehow working out.

_Maybe._

Or maybe I was just horny. 

"Did you really sleep with Andy?"

There was that conversational whiplash thing again. I shook my head to get a desperate grab at some of my bearings that had just been snatched and stammered around a reply while he stood there, leaning on his stick, waiting for my answer.

"Yeah, well, it was my first night here and I was angry and _very_ drunk and the heat wasn't on in my apartment yet."

He held that stare for a long time, then nodded and bent down to pick up the puck. "You need an electric wooby."

"What in the hell is an electric wooby?"

He dropped the puck onto the ice again and took a hard swing at it, sending it careening across the lot into a snowdrift on the far side. "It's like a hot water bottle but no water. You sleep with it."

"Kinky. I've always been more of a warm body type." He didn't look at me, but I could see him shaking his head like he was just about three-quarters done with me as he fished another puck out of his pocket and dropped it. "I'd really rather you just, you know, fixed my heater. You're the landlord to my house, right?"

"Nothing's wrong with your heater, you just need to turn it on."

"I don't know how to do that."

 _Now_ he looked at me, and it was a look so rife with cynical judgement that it sent me scrambling onto the defensive. "What? I'm a city girl, we have people we pay to do those kind of things." The look switched to a disbelieving sort of condescension and I pinballed straight into deflection to make it go away. "Why are you asking anyway, about me and Andy. Is it against department rules?"

"No, I just think it's funny."

"Well, there doesn't seem to be much of a nightlife around here."

He took another swing. The puck shot across the ice and ricocheted off the light post with a heavy thud.

"Like I said, there's just two things to do in this town."

"Yeah yeah I know, fuck and play hockey. Well, I've never played hockey before and apparently I'm no good at the fucking thing either. Randy Andy can't even remember it."

"Andy has the short term memory of that blue fish from Finding Nemo. And he's a blackout drinker, so...take some consolation in that, I guess." The puck came to rest a few yards away and he skated out toward it, yelling back at me over his shoulder. "If it makes it any better, he did say you're a shit cuddler."

I laughed.

"Yeah I thought that might make you feel better."

"When did he have time to say that in between Wilson and the llama?"

"While you were at the taxidermist." Another resounding _thwak_ sent the new puck off somewhere into the tall weeds on the other side of the lot. He didn't seem to have any intention of elaborating on the conversation between himself and Andy - and that felt like a kindness I probably didn't deserve.

"God, a girl can't leave the room without a bunch of old ladies discussing her sex life. And why did you ask me if you already talked to him?"

He didn't say anything, and just as he was drawing back his stick to take another swing something awful occurred to me. "You're not going to fire him are you?"

"I'd dump your body in the river before I'd fire Andy. Metaphorically speaking."

_THWAK._

I didn't see how that was a metaphor, but god I wished he would stop swinging that goddamn stick. I figured I could turn around and walk off and he wouldn't even notice I was gone, but something in me wanted to stick around, feel him out a little more, see what kind of a talker he was. I considered myself a high notch above the rest of the lackeys at the station but Chief was obviously an authority figure to be reckoned with, and it never hurt to do a little reckoning.

If I could get around that face of his. It was like a roadblock that kept making me slam on the brakes when all I wanted to do was floorboard it.

"So how'd you end up in law enforcement? Is it your life's calling or just a tolerable accident?"

"Eh, I dunno." Another hard whack shot a puck past my knees and dinged it off the Jeep's hubcap. "I'm good enough at it I suppose. My only ambition was ever to be in the majors. The cop thing...it's just a job."

I could only assume he meant the hockey majors. Part of me was glad he hadn't made it - would have been a damn shame to wreck those GQ looks of his and I'd seen the shape some of those guys on ESPN ended up in. But the smooth way he moved on the slick ice with a surefooted grace and quick agility, I could see it. He'd have been good. But he was too old now, and there was an underlying sort of frustrated sadness to him that all but screamed _thwarted life plans._ And then I remembered the way he'd limped when we were chasing Wilson and regretted my use of the word accident.

"See that's where you and I part ways. I live for what I do. It's all I have, and I'm good at it, and I love it. And one mistake booted me right the fuck out of it and landed me here, where my job doesn't even really exist and there's nothing for me to do but chase weird animals and watch you knock little black things across frozen parking lots in the dark."

"Get a hobby. Develop a skill."

"I don't want a hobby, I want my life back."

He wasn't paying attention to me, his focus was entirely glued to that damn puck again. The way he was beating the shit out of it made me think he might be harboring a bit of a personal grudge. And he didn't seem to have any desire to argue against my whining, which I couldn't really blame him for. I leaned back against the hood of the Jeep and watched him until I couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"Okay, what kind of skill have you developed. Aside from this weird obsession with slipping around on ice hitting gigantic stale oreos with sticks."

He skidded to a stop on the far side of the lot and stood there, breathing hard, fog billowing from his mouth in short spurts. "I can play the clarinet."

"What?! No way. You're lying."

"No, I'm kinda good at it. I can play Claire de Lune."

"You're making this up."

He laughed and I could see what my problem for the next year was going to be, plain as the unnaturally huge snowflakes that kept plopping onto my face from above. It wasn't the stupid backwards town or the joke of a PD comprised of lumberjacks and potheads. It wasn't the shitty weather or the incompetent llama farmers or the theater group that put guns in Louisa May Alcott plays. It wasn't even the hellhound that would no doubt keep me out of the station's only bathroom for the duration of my exile.

It was the terrifying fact that Chief had a ridiculous amount of natural charm without overtly being a charmer. And if that didn't hit all my challenge buttons every bit as hard as he was hitting those pucks, I couldn't tell you what would. But at least I knew what I was up against now.

"Wait till the Christmas pageant and see. Third chair clarinet. Second if I arrest Hank Tooley the night before."

"Oh my god."

He looked back over at me again, seemingly gauging my disbelief and getting something of a kick out of it. I had his attention now. And suddenly we didn't seem so much like displeased superior officer and problematic scrub-out as just...two people having a chat.

On ice. In a rapidly accelerating snowstorm. And at least one of us wanted nothing more than to haul ass across that ice and tackle the other one for purposes unbecoming of a professional employer/employee relationship.

I cleared my throat to hide my sudden discomfort. "Does everyone else have such impressive side skills?"

Chief nodded toward the puck that had drifted to a stop between my feet. "Kevin teaches Zumba, the grannies love him. And he's studying psychology."

"Wow, that's...mildly terrifying." I kicked the puck back to him and he nodded, chuckling a little.

"Yeah. Sarah writes kids books. Cree makes totem poles."

"He makes what?"

"Totem poles. You know." He pointed with his stick toward a huge, ornately carved pole off to the left of the station house that I hadn't noticed on my way out. "He's Chippewa."

"Huh, interesting - I'd have thought he was Neanderthal. And Andy?"

He smacked the puck hard enough to knock himself slightly off balance, and the painful wince that flickered across his face for a brief moment made me suck in my breath for him. Whatever it was that had given him the limp was more than just a bruise and I had all the sympathy in the world for that look that had twisted his features. I knew that look. I'd seen it in my own mirror so many times during my back therapy that I'd started to think it was going to be my resting face for the remainder of my life. "Nobody's sure what Andy does when he's not at work. He's always been a bit of a local cryptid."

"That figures."

He skated slowly over to me and leaned on the front of the Jeep, tossing his stick up onto the hood and lowering his head so I couldn't see his face. Poor guy wasn't feeling too good. I did my best to pretend not to notice, but god help me it was difficult not reaching across the space between us to lay my hand on his head. "You must know how to do something," he finally said, covering the painful shortness of breath in his voice with a tilt of sarcasm. "Can't you bake? Knit? Make those little cats that sit on the mantel wearing hats and holding signs with clever shit written on 'em?"

"All stereotypically female things - and no, I can't do any of them."

He grinned, and it was such a delicious little sideways grin with literally nothing ulterior behind it that I nearly groaned out loud. "I thought for sure you'd be good at needlepoint."

Yeah, he was just messing with me now. That grin did have something behind it, but it was more along the lines of playful baiting than suggestive teasing. "You'd be surprised how much knowledge I don't have based simply on the criteria of being a woman."

There it was again, that little grin caught somewhere between a slightly tarnished innocence and almost but not quite wickedness. "I think you undersell yourself too much."

"And why would I do that."

"I dunno. Maybe to keep people from expecting anything out of you."

"Yeah, you may be right there. Makes life easier though, you gotta give it that."

He went quiet for a minute, and for those long silent seconds we just sort of coexisted in a shared space where the snow was sort of pretty and the lack of words wasn't uncomfortable. In another time and another place maybe Chief and I could have been something other than just antagonistic associates.

But this wasn't another time and it definitely wasn't another place. We both looked up in response to a door slamming and were graced with the sight of Wilson waving goodbye to us from the top of the hill behind the station.

We both waved back.

"Is he really supposed to let himself out?"

"Eh, Wilson's harmless. Stupid...but harmless."

I couldn't argue with that, so I didn't.

"Go home Morley," Chief finally said, not bothering to look at me. "Tomorrow I want you in the car with Cade, he's going to show you how to get around the back streets."

I nodded even though I knew he wasn't seeing it. He was probably just done with me, but it felt like something else too, something that probably didn't have anything to do with me at all.

"Yeah...absolutely, boss."

When I got to my car I looked back down the hill toward the iced over back lot. Chief was laying on the hood of his Jeep with his head on the windshield, staring up at the first pale smattering of stars that had finally broken through the clouds. 

I didn't go home. I wasn't even really sure where home was - I'd been there exactly once, dropped off from the airport by a cab driver who looked like Nathan Lane and smelled like Michelob - and I wasn't sure I could even find my way back there now. Everything looked different since the sun had gone down. It wasn't an unattractive little town, all covered in white and sparkling in the moonlight as I sat in my loaned truck staring out over the hood at a long street lined with run-down gingerbread houses. It was quite pretty actually, out here in the silence of night with no chaos or people or noise, all peaceful and Norman-Rockwellian.

But it wasn't _my_ town.

I sighed and dialed the number of the one person on earth I actually wanted to talk to.

"Hi baby."

The little voice at the other end of the line took some of the chill off my heart.

"Hi Aunt Greta! I miss you!"

"Aww, I miss you too sweetie. How's school?"

"Not good. But I like art."

"School's never good, but you gotta do your best, you hear me? Make me proud."

"I will."

"Draw me something for my fridge, it's got nothing on it yet."

"I will. We learned how to make hippypottymisses today."

I started to laugh, but something choked in my throat. God. There was a long pause, and then that sweet little voice snatched my heart out of my chest again with all the hopefulness of a question that shouldn't have been asked. "When are you coming back?"

"I dunno, baby. They tell me it'll be a year, but I'm trying to make it shorter."

The tiny frustrated groan of a six year old facing a disappointment they don't know how to handle sighed quietly in my ear and I swallowed hard to steady my voice. It was snowing again, dotting the windshield with gigantic flakes that glistened in the moonlight. Fairytale. Twilight Zone.

Nightmare.

"You missing your daddy?"

"Yeah."

"Me too."

And then we didn't say anything else for a long time, because even though she was just six, Joe's little girl knew what the score was. And she held none of it against me.

At least one of us didn't.

I think I must have sat there for an hour or more, just watching the snow fall after I told her goodnight. At some point during this long dark fuckery of the soul something very tall and very hairy strolled slowly through my headlights, pausing just long enough to raise its head and meet eyes with me. Unfortunately it wasn't Andy.

It was Elsie.

And I just watched her saunter on by like she hadn't a care in the world, flicking her tongue at me before continuing on her way as if to say _Screw you new transfer, you're in my world now._

Or maybe she was just tasting the snowflakes as they fell.

"Hey Greta."

"Hey." It took a lot of looking up to get to the sleepy Irishman's face, but I craned my stiff neck straight back and did it anyway because I needed to see those kind eyes of his. I knew there wouldn't be any judgement or disapproval in them - not that he knew of anything to judge or disapprove of me for. He stepped aside and I moved past him into the house.

"Sorry about today," he mumbled, rubbing at his eyes. "I forgot."

"Yeah, I didn't figure it was malicious. You don't seem to have a mean bone in your body." I reached out to punch his shoulder, but something stupid in me took over and the playful show of aggression I had planned turned into another type of aggressive behavior entirely. I stroked a finger across the soft bristly beard covering his cheek, noticing with a flinch in my chest that he leaned into my touch like a puppy wanting to be petted more. He opened his eyes and smiled a sweetly sleepy smile at me.

"You're not, like, falling in love with me or anything, are you?"

"Cutiepie, what you're looking at is the old L&H." I shrugged out of my coat and tossed it on the couch. "Lonely and horny. I'm not even sure I've got anything you could actually call 'love' in me these days."

He pushed a hand through his unruly hair and yawned. "Okay, good. 'Cause I don't think I'm really the marrying type."

"Me neither, babe." I took his hand and led him toward my vague memory of where his bedroom was located. "Me neither."

_To be continued..._


	13. We're All Untouchable Until Someone Touches Us

Andy let me lead him to the bedroom and urge him down onto the bed, all doe-eyed sweet and quietly submissive and absolutely everything I needed at that moment. It didn't matter that Chief's face flittered through my head when I closed my eyes, like an old black and white TV fritzing in a dark room. I knew Andy didn't care who I thought of - because even though I barely knew him, I already knew what he was about. He was everyone's everything, that one person who could be counted on to come through for you no matter what it was you asked of him. There was a reason he was the station gopher and it wasn't because he wasn't suited for anything else. He was just _that guy._

God was I thankful he'd been the first person I met in this town. And as I settled to my knees between his ridiculously long legs and pushed him back on the bed to tug his pajamas down, he leaned back on his elbows and reached out to push my hair back off my brow with one finger.

He smiled down at me, a soft, sweet, ridiculously wide little smile that said nothing about lust and everything in the world about tenderness and affection.

I wasn't used to this.

"This is going to feel good," he whispered against my cheek, leaning forward to nuzzle me before letting me push him back again. "We'll remember it this time."

I wasn't sure full recall was the ideal scenario, but I sure as hell didn't feel like drinking just to preemptively blank it out again. "What can I do to you?" I asked him, sliding my fingertips up and down the insides of his thighs, feeling that familiar shiver of excitement when he groaned and tried to push his knees together. But I was between them and they ended up just clenching against my shoulders.

"Anything," he moaned. "Anything you want."

Oh, nice...sweet and submissive and _adventurous,_ all my favorite things in one long lovely package with sexy deepset eyes and an expressive face to tell me just how good I was doing it all. A flashback to my panties tied around his wrists brought back a quick memory of him stretched out on the bed with his arms over his head, restrained and at my whim, with all that gorgeous hair falling over his face so that all I could see was his plush lips struggling to put together words that matched the sensations I was subjecting him to. The obvious delight in his reactions was thrilling, exciting, arousing...

 _...heartwarming._ His face showed it all, like a child finding something magical in the grass, an unhidden flash of happiness each and every time that happiness was felt. It suddenly made sense, why he hadn't been able to last an entire day without spilling our dirty little secret. There was no guile in him, no dishonesty, no sense of sneakiness. He'd showed me his weed knowing I could arrest him on the spot and he'd popped off with a simple confession of fact when the boy talk had turned toward a subject he knew. He hadn't thought twice about it and nothing had thumped him in the head and told him _this is gonna get you kicked in the nads behind the station_.

Andy wasn't stupid - he was just honest and open, and though I didn't believe for a second that he was innocent by any stretch of the imagination, there was an innocence in him that made him just about the cutest fucking thing I'd ever laid eyes on.

He was the perfect fuckbuddy. He wasn't going to fall in love with me and complicate things, and I wasn't going to fall in love with him and have to give him up. But we sure as hell were going to like each other, and for the rest of the night that was exactly what we did. We liked each other until a set of high pitched moans - his or mine, I couldn't really be sure once we got going good - startled something in the attic and sent it scuttling off across the ceiling over our heads.

"A family of raccoons," he said with a smile when I stopped sucking and looked up in confusion. "They live up there all Winter and come out in the Spring."

"Okay. Horrifying, but okay."

He sat up and took my hands. "Let me do you for a while."

"But you're not finished."

"It's not time for that yet."

This was...another first for me. In my experience men always wanted to barrel toward the finish line until they blasted through it and claimed their trophy, but Andy seemed to prefer everything that came before that point. Pun perhaps intentional.

And god was it good.

It was what I needed. Something, anything, to blot out the past year and the memory of my last conversation with Joe and my last conversation with his little girl and that last conversation with Chief that was still frustrating me - and the sick hopeless realization that I wasn't likely to score enough points with him to get me an early release from this place. But I'd get an early release of an entirely different kind from Andy, and at the moment that was just about good enough.

A couple of forgetful hours could do wonders for a girl's head.

We shifted positions and he scooted down to the end of the bed, nudging my thighs apart with his face, knocking the displaced pillows onto the floor when he tugged me down so he could lay between them and get comfortable.

_Comfortable._

If that wasn't an odd thing. He was comfortable, I was comfortable, everyone involved was content and relaxed and enjoying themselves. I couldn't remember ever being absolutely and unarguably at ease during sex before, not completely, but every time Andy stopped what he was doing and asked me if I was alright I came a little bit closer to realizing something profound.

I really should have branched out to different types of guys a _lot_ sooner in my life.

I woke up sometime during the night, wrapped up in Andy's freakishly long arms with his hair across my shoulder like a gentle blanket, and all I could do was stare at his sweet face and wonder if I deserved his friendship. I'd only ever really had one friend, and the memory of being told I'd killed him was just one thing on the long laundry list of colossal Greta Morley fuckups I was going to have to live with.

I sure hoped I wouldn't end up killing this one. Good friends were hard to come by, and the last time I checked I didn't exactly have an overabundance of people waiting to care about me.

He sighed in his sleep and cuddled closer to me.

Goddammit. I wasn't sure what that achy feeling in my chest was, but it wasn't at all awful.

"Your pants are making noise."

I groaned and rolled over to shoot the stink eye at my little pile of clothes on the floor. My phone was in there somewhere, buried in the haste and frenzy that had accompanied Mister Burns and myself while we were undressing me the previous evening. I couldn't reach it without leaving the warmth of the bed, and that was something I just wasn't willing to do yet.

It was damn cold, and it was morning. Two things I didn't care much for.

"Can you reach that? What am I saying, of course you can reach it, you have the wing span of a pterodactyl."

Andy dragged himself to the edge of the bed and retrieved the beeping device, opening one eye to focus on the flashing alert message. "It says you're ovulating."

"Ahhhhh shit." My cycle calendar. Well, the perpetual horniness made sense now. Andy held the phone in front of my face and I tapped the alarm away.

"It takes longer for a woman to reach orgasm when she's ovulating."

Leave it to a guy known as Randy Andy to say something like that - and the conversational whiplash thing was definitely a _thing_ around this place, everyone seemed to have a raging case of it. First conversation of the day and not yet five minutes into it I needed a lawyer and a neck brace.

I stifled a laugh because he sounded serious and I didn't want to belittle whatever piece of whack-ass knowledge he was about to impart to me. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. It's biology's way of keeping the penis in the vagina longer and increasing the odds of fertilization. Ensures the survival of the species."

I didn't know whether to go ahead and laugh and ask him where the hell he heard that or gather my shoes and leave before he thought of any more mortifying scientific trivia to infodump on me. It was too damn early for advanced sex ed and I was way too damn cold.

"Huh. Why do you know that? I have a vagina and I've never heard that."

He shrugged and stretched his back. He looked like a long skinny cat finding a warm sliver of sunlight on the floor to lay in. "I read a lot."

"Not much else to do around here I guess."

"That's about it. Books and sex."

I snuggled up under his arm and he immediately turned onto his side, curling himself around me. For a skinny guy he was surprisingly comfortable to cuddle with. And warm like an oven, which was what I wanted right then more than just about anything else in the world. "Chief says hockey and sex."

"Chief does all his reading at the station, I guess after all that paperwork every day cracking open a volume of Faulkner doesn't hold much appeal."

"I could see that." I waited a bit, listening to him breathe, just about to start purring from the soft slow stroking his long fingers were doing up and down my bare back under the blankets. Asking about Chief while I was in bed with him seemed like such poor form - but something told me he wasn't the type to get his feelings hurt. And I wanted more information that wasn't along the lines of female biology.

I was more into the Chief's biology as of just about a day ago. Andy seemed like a good source for all things local, so I went for it on the assumption that he was the one person in town that everybody got drunk with and told their secrets to. "So who does he get his sex from?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody? For real? He hasn't got some hot little cocktail waitress tucked away in a neighboring town that he sneaks off to on weekends?"

"Not that I know of."

"Huh...well, I guess that explains the bitchiness. And that clenchy thing he does with his jaw."

I tried mimicking it but those fingers were gliding slowly over the curve of my butt and up the small of my back, up and down, slow and light, and suddenly hockey and sex, books and sex, Chief and reading and ovulating, none of it seemed relevant except one part - the sex part.

How fortunate that I happened to be in bed with someone who seemed to love the idea as much as I did.

"Hey cutiepie, somebody's at your door."

Something weird was happening in the cozy little gingerbread house halfway down Asiginaak Lane and despite the fact that I should have been freaked out about it, I wasn't grabbing my shoes and bag and heading for the door with an overwhelming case of _get me the fuck out of here._ What I _was_ doing was standing at an ancient old flametop stove stirring a pan of scrambled eggs while coffee brewed in a noisily burping percolator that had obviously time-jumped here from 1953. What people in this town had against modern appliances was beyond me, but everything seemed to be in weirdly good working order. I expected to eventually meet an ancient old handyman dressed in a blacksmith's apron from the turn of the century who spoke with an odd Middle European accent, but until he showed up all I could do was assume Andy knew how to fix old things himself.

"Oh hey Chief."

I froze, spatula mid-air over the pan, too mortified to blink until the percolator belched and brought me back. I heard the door click shut and a mere handful of seconds later it was too late for a tidy escape through the little paned window over the sink. Andy came around the partition separating the front room from the kitchen, and about a blink and a half later Chief followed.

There was an electrically charged moment of simmering awkward panic before I realized something.

I didn't owe this guy shit. As of this second in time he hadn't done me any favors, he was tolerating my presence in his precinct under orders, and he'd flat out told me in no uncertain terms the night before that he wasn't interested in entering into any sort of a relationship with me. There was no reason for me to feel this weird standing in Andy's kitchen, in Andy's huge tee shirt and his freakishly long pajama pants with his too-big socks falling down around my ankles, cooking him and myself a post-coital breakfast while he stood there yawning in his boxers and bathrobe with his crazy after-sex hair sticking up everywhere. He very likely had visible bite marks and a raw looking scratch or two just to make the whole thing more blatantly obvious.

_Is it against department rules?_

_No, I just think it's funny._

Yeah. Real funny.

Jackass.

"Morning Chief."

The look on Chief's face was the closest thing to _Kill me now bury me later_ that I've ever seen in my life. He stopped where he stood and just stared at me for the longest time, a muscle in his cheek twitching with the effort of not looking too closely at the scene in front of him. But bless him and his admirable self control qualities, he kept his eyes on my face and didn't do the quick up and down to Andy's pajamas that I knew was probably taking every bit of situational discipline he had in him. 

"This is obviously a bad time, I'm gonna...go..." He motioned to some nondescript place behind him with both hands, quickly averting his eyes like he'd just walked in on us screwing on the sofa. And as much as I was enjoying his discomfort, I really didn't want him to leave.

I wanted him to _suffer._ It was arbitrary and not really based on anything in particular other than the fact that he had rebuffed me without so much as a longing glance, and I was past being embarrassed about my crash and burn failure from the previous night. This man seemed completely impervious to whatever halfassed charm I thought I had.

And I was just a little bit mad about that.

"We're about to have some breakfast, come join us."

"No, really, it's okay."

"Aw come on Chief, I'll bet you haven't eaten yet, have you. Most important meal of the day, right?"

"Yeah, no, really. I gotta get back to the station."

"Why?" I put the spatula against my hip in a loose interpretation of my grandmother standing in the kitchen demanding to know why my brother was just dragging his ass into the house at seven a.m. and stared the poor man down with the highest quality _I was here first_ smirk that I could conjure. "Got a loose llama on the morning itinerary? I bet you've got someone who sets those things loose every few days just to give your officers something to do, am I right?"

He was side-eyeing Andy hard, and as exciting as I found his low-key jealousy, I didn't want him holding my indiscretions against the poor guy. But before I could taunt him any further and pull that heated glare away from the blissfully oblivious Irishman sitting at the table sleepily rubbing at the deep purple suck marks on his neck, Chief shook his head and flashed me a tersely polite little smile.

"Thanks, but no." And then with a quietly mumbled "See you at the station," he turned around and showed himself out.

_To be continued..._


	14. Never Saw A Woman So Alone

I didn't go to any great pains making sure Andy and I walked into the station separately later that morning. Good form and professionalism would have - _should_ have - dictated that we give it a respectful five minutes in between appearances if for no other reason than to keep the jaws from dropping, but I was so full of fuck it after watching Chief glare at Andy that I was half tempted to stroll in holding his hand and give him a public kiss in front of everyone. It would have been worth it just to start his day off with a blush and set the place into a tizzy. The old hens could flap their wings all the wanted, everyone knew anyway.

I didn't do it though. I had no idea what kind of abuse they might heap on the poor guy, and all I really wanted was to keep Chief on the edge of discomfort for a while. I didn't care much about the rest of them. But I still dropped Andy off at the door and took my time parking my rattly old truck around the side of the station, because he didn't deserve anything they had loaded in their barrels for me.

Someone had taken the time to welcome me to my second day of work with a designated parking spot, spray-painted on a styrofoam takeout box and thumb-tacked to a tree.

**_L.A. WOMAN_ **

Creeley, most likely. Only he could take a song title and turn it into a double barreled insult - my two big sins, being from Los Angeles and being a woman. I stared at it for a minute, having something of an internal debate about ripping it down.

I decided to just leave it. None of the playground bully nonsense these dipshits could do was going to bother me...I'd made my decision to own it all. I _was_ the LA Woman, and Wereabunchofassholes was going to know what that meant by the time I blasted out of here.

Chief was standing in the doorway to his office when I walked in and immediately crooked a finger at me, the silent summons to join him for a rundown on whatever fresh hell the day had in store for me. Cree was sitting on the corner of Sarah's desk as usual and turned to hoot at me, a huge amused smile shooting across his big dumb face. "Haven't even sat your ass down and you're in trouble already, geezus. Some kinda record."

"She didn't get Elsie back."

We all turned around and looked at Kevin, standing so still in the mouth of the hallway that I'd walked right past him on my way in and never saw him. Cree jumped a little. "Goddamn would somebody get that guy a bell? Near pissed myself."

"No I didn't get Elsie back, would you care to know why?"

"No."

"No."

"I'd like to know."

Another communal head spin, this time to look at Sarah. She was sitting behind her desk with her hands linked under her chin like a first grade teacher waiting to hear who started the latest playground altercation. It wasn't clear if she was baiting me or if she had a point to prove or if she was simply bored and looking for entertainment to start her day, but I decided to play to whatever audience I happened to have, and she was it. The rest of them would listen out of sheer spiteful curiosity and their inbred smalltown need to be up in everyone's business but their own.

"Okay, first I was sent out without proper equipment. There's no way to put a wildebeest in a cruiser - "

"Llama."

"- whatever Kevin, it's a goddamn tangerine chupacabra and it won't fit in the back seat of a Taurus. And unless tackling them with a tazer is standard procedure, I was provided with no gear for catching the damn thing. Second, who puts a newbie on unfamiliar streets with a time sensitive assignment, no GPS, and no first-day ridealong? And third - "

"Third mistake was putting Andy in the car with her."

Cade started laughing, covering his face with both hands when I turned to glare at him. Cree was doing lewd hand gestures that strongly indicated fucking. "Never put Captain Cock Ring in a cruiser with a functioning back seat, that's the only place Chief screwed up."

Andy had wandered into the room and gave Cree a pained look. "Man, the cock ring thing was three years ago."

"Yeah and it's gonna be another ten before I let you live it down."

"Okay everybody shut up." Chief reconfirmed his presence with a loud rap on the doorway to let us know he'd had enough - he'd let it go on for far too long, to be honest - and turned our escaped attention back to him before motioning me into his office. "In here now, Morley."

I didn't have to be told to shut the door behind me, though I knew it wouldn't serve any real purpose. It was barely clicked before I heard foosteps scrambling outside it.

"Good morning Chief. Again."

He ignored my smug little smirk and dropped into his chair like he was already exhausted. "I'm sure I can trust you not to do what they - "

I stared at him, sort of aghast at the abrupt insinuation. "What? Are you serious? I can tell you what we were doing the entire time we were out in that car and I assure you _none_ of it had _anything_ to do with bumping uglies." My voice was rising against my original intention of remaining in control and I'd have laid dollars to dimes every ear in the station was already glued to the other side of the door behind me. Chief had bent over behind his desk and was busily lacing a new shoelace through the eyelets of his work boot, and looked up at me with one eyebrow cocked when I stopped talking.

We were obviously going to start a battle of wills that wouldn't end until someone begged for mercy.

Good thing I wasn't a beggar.

But he apparently wasn't either. "Did you really just say _bumping uglies?"_

I straightened my back and stared him straight in the eye. "It's not appropriate to say _fucking_ in the Chief's office." I could hear sniggering outside the door and did my best to ignore it while Chief went back to lacing his boot like we couldn't hear Creeley loud and clear repeating everything I said as Cade cackled in the background.

"Goddamn you're a mess."

That bit was whispered under his breath, but I heard it and had myself a shiver of satisfaction at the thought of Chief being flustered over me. He sat back up and inspected his shoe for a second, then sighed and turned his creaky old leather chair to look at me. "You're in the car with Creeley today."

Oh...oh hell _no._ "What?! You said I was going with Cade!"

"Something came up, Cade's got an assignment."

"Then give me Andy again, he's a good partner."

"Yeah I'll bet he is." There was a snide sort of sarcasm in his little laugh and I knew instantly what the problem here was. Chief wasn't processing what he'd seen in Andy's kitchen like an emotionally mature adult would, and it was making him short-fused and cranky. He'd also just handed me everything I needed to work with to bring on his own personal apocalypse.

It was time to start poking the bear. 

"You disapprove of me being friends with Andy?"

"Was _that_ what that was."

"Yeah, that's what that was."

"I'm not sure your version of friendship matches up with any definition I've ever read."

"Why? You jealous?"

 _Poke._ His eyes narrowed just a bit and he sat up a little straighter in his chair.

"What? No."

"You sure did _act_ jealous."

Tiny bit straighter.

"I did not."

"Yeah, you did. Glowering at Andy like he'd just beat you in the Fall Festival beauty contest - "

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

" - refusing to stay for breakfast, we were perfectly happy to share our pancakes but _no_ you had to be rude and stomp out in a huff like somebody wedgied you on the playground in front of your buddies - "

"I wasn't...it wasn't a huff..."

"Yes it most certainly was, you were so shook you bumped into the coffee table on your way out."

"I'd just slammed my finger in the car door, Morley."

I stopped my poking rampage and stared at him, a little bit shocked, noticing for the first time that his right hand was wrapped up in a bandanna and resting on the edge of the desk. I didn't even think before I stepped around the desk and reached for it; my quest to stroke all his fur the wrong way was put on temporary hold while something that felt weirdly like concern took its place. "Let me see."

"It's fine."

"It doesn't look fine."

"It is, it's...it's fine."

He wasn't thrilled about letting me unwrap his hand and inspect his injury, but he didn't put up any real struggle to stop me either. The bandanna fell away to reveal his index finger with a ragged tear up the outer side to the edge of the nailbed, covered in dried blood and starting to swell. "Oh my god, that's bad. Be still," I ordered him as I knelt down beside his chair and bumped his knees aside with my elbow to make room. All the venom and vinegar was suddenly gone out of me, and he seemed pretty resigned to giving up the fight himself - but he still took a deep breath that didn't seem at all about the pain of me moving his finger to see if it was broken and took one more halfhearted shot at getting me to leave him alone.

"It's _fine_ Morley."

"You got some alcohol?"

He opened his mouth and I knew he was going to protest again, but I stood up and stared him down, hands on my hips, till he finally closed his mouth and rubbed at his eyes with his other hand. I was standing between his knees and his gaze flitted down for a brief moment before moving quickly to some nondescript spot to the left of the desk. "Bottom drawer."

He was getting rattled. But so was I. Being this close to him was... _unsettling_ was the best word I could come up with for it and I stepped away to reach for the drawer, putting the fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach firmly out of my head. A half empty bottle of Jim Beam rolled forward with a clunk when I opened it. "Not that kind."

"That's all I got."

"Am I correct in assuming there's no first aid kit anywhere in the building?"

He didn't respond. A definite yes, though I didn't need an answer to know there wouldn't be a single piece of state-mandated safety equipment in the entire station. I picked his hand up again and I'll be damned if his thumb didn't absently move up to stroke briefly over the backs of my knuckles.

That was...unwelcome...and it was throwing me off my endgame. I was supposed to be poking him with every sharp stick I could find, not nurturing his prickly ass. I set his hand back down on the desk - with more force than was strictly necessary - and pulled out the bottle, trying hard not to look at him while I doused the bandanna in whiskey. A damn sad waste of good booze. The side of my leg was against his knee and he didn't seem the least bit interested in scooting out of my way, so I cleared my throat and resumed poking. "So what were you jealous for?"

He winced and sucked in a hiss of breath when the alcohol soaked cloth touched the raw torn skin. "You cooked him breakfast. Just seemed so...domestic." He was talking out of one side of his mouth, biting down with the other side. I knew it was the sting of the booze. It was absolutely a coping reaction to deal with the burn. But that didn't stop me from having to close my eyes tight for a second to get a grip on myself, because it was also the hottest thing I'd seen in at least an hour. "I never figured you for the type."

"Maybe I was looking after him."

"Like you're looking after me right now? I'm starting to think this tough act of yours is strictly that. An act."

He was fidgeting and I tightened my grip on his hand to keep him still. "Chief, there is a huge difference between scrambling eggs the morning after and doing first aid on a busted knuckle, and if you can't figure it out for yourself I'm not going to waste my time educating you on what that difference is."

He winced hard. Could have been the burn, could have been me stepping on his foot, but the timing of it - almost exactly matched to the moment _the morning after_ came out of my mouth - gave away the most likely option, and that was the simple fact that we just kept circling back around to jealousy.

It was time for the wrapping to go back on the wound and for this conversation to end.

But neither of us seemed able to give up the coveted last word.

"So it was like aftercare then, huh."

Huh. _Aftercare_ wasn't a word I'd ever expected to hear him say. I was a little bit shocked that he knew what it meant and was using it in the proper context.

"No, it was like he's skinny and I think he forgets to eat because you're always sending him around on errands." I purposefully tugged on the bandanna a little too hard as I tied it around his hand and had to swallow a satisfied giggle when he sucked his breath in again, sharper this time. If he could use big sexy words, by god so could I. "So you're into the whole aftercare thing, huh?"

"Not if it feels like this." Pain was creasing his handsome face and I might have felt just a tiny bit evil about hurting him on purpose. Maybe. A _tiny_ bit. He left his hand in mid-air for a second after I turned it loose, pretending to check my work while I recapped the bottle and shut it away in the bottom drawer before any wild notions about taking a few slugs off it overtook me. "Breakfast is aftercare?"

"Sure. Anything after is aftercare."

"Then I guess I'm as into it as anyone."

There were a long silent few seconds where neither of us said anything else, and for one or two of those seconds I wondered which us us was the winner here. Chief was tucking the ends of the bandanna up under where it was wrapped across his palm, effectively undoing what I'd just done and irritating me enough to provoke what shot out of my mouth next. "By the way, he's going to be sleeping at my place for a few days because his hot water heater's out."

His head shot up and the bandage unraveled itself when he let go of it.

"It is?"

"Yeah, don't you check on these things?" I fixed him with my sternest glare and grabbed him by the wrist with an annoyed sigh. It wasn't immediately clear if he was reacting to the idea of Andy staying at my place - which was a lie, Andy and I hadn't had any such discussion - or to the earthshaking revelation that his furnace was on the fritz. The possibility that it could very well be the second one pissed me off more than I would have liked to admit. "Thought you were the landlord around here."

"He hasn't said anything."

"Well maybe you should ask. Does anyone check on him at all? There's a prescription bottle for Ritalin in his bathroom - empty - that hasn't been refilled since September."

"He's not taking his Ritalin?"

The poor man looked lost, confused, and not least of all embarrassed while I quickly redid the bandage. I wasn't gentle, but I felt it was a fair trade-off for him doing such an admirable job of parrying verbally with me.

How dare he be so proficient.

"While we're on the subject of what Andy gets up to, maybe you should pay him more so he doesn't have to moonlight as a drug dealer."

"Ouch! I pay him fine, Morley."

"Is that right. Then what's with the dropoffs all over town?" He fixed me with a blank look and I let his hand drop to stand up. "When we went out on our little Elsie hunt he had me stop so he could make a delivery. In a school zone. I swear to god I'm going to start arresting him every fifteen minutes if you don't do something."

His eyes followed me as I moved away and started my triumphant exit; I could feel him watching and the only question now was whether he was issuing a death glare aimed at the back of my head or appreciating my backside. The sad truth of it was that the death glare was the more likely of the two. He sucked in a deep breath to fire off a parting shot as I paused at the door with my hand on the knob.

"Look Morley, I know you're used to things being done right but we don't operate in the real world here. As long as something isn't a felony and doesn't hurt anyone we really don't care."

"Are you guys even for real?" I tried to turn the knob, but someone was holding it on the other side. "Have I walked into one of those reality shows where things get more and more stupid until I stumble out in front of the judges in tears and wail that I want to go home while Tyra Banks tells me how disappointed she is in me? _LET GO OF THE DOORKNOB!!_ Because I've decided you and your little team of chucklefucks aren't going to defeat me." I yanked on the door again. _"LET GO OF THE GODDAMN KNOB!!"_

That man, I swear to god, he had the nerve to sit there looking at me the way I figure Perseus looked in the mirror when he realized Medusa's reflection couldn't do anything to him. An infuriatingly amused little smile settled itself on his mouth and he leaned back in his chair while I kicked at the door.

"Chucklefucks."

"Yes, _chucklefucks._ The idiots with their ears against this door right now, _those_ chucklefucks." A hard slap to the center of the door brought a startled yelp from the other side. "And if you don't mind, the next time you decide to drop in at Andy's that early, give him a call first." I gave the door one more hard yank and hurled a death glare of my own at the scattering eavesdroppers when it finally flew open. I had a final parting shot waiting to be fired, and I turned to meet Chief's icy hot stare as I issued it.

"And if I answer his phone, just keep driving." 

_To be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "L.A. Woman" by Jim Morrison and The Doors, 1971


	15. Mad Llamas and Norwegians

I guess the look on my face when I came out of Chief's office was deterrent enough to keep the peanut gallery from speaking to me. I went to Cade's desk and held my hand out.

"Dime."

He sat back in his chair and stared at my hand for a second, then looked up at me with a broad smile that said a whole lot of things without the annoying presence of words.

_You're gonna make it._

_Hang in there._

_But watch your ass._

And then he dumped the pencil mug on his desk and handed over the dime. As I was shoving the door open into the icy godforsaken blast of a new Wegotnobrains morning I could hear Creeley cursing from the far side of the room, receiving his day's orders from Chief.

It was good to know I wasn't the only one who wasn't thrilled with the morning itinerary.

Andy's water heater really was on the fritz, that part hadn't been a lie - I had let him have what little hot water there was because he was somehow the messier of the two of us after the morning's frivolities, and the last thing I wanted was Creeley sniffing him and launching into a lewd commentary of assumptions. Blessedly the taxidermist's bathroom had not only hot water but a mirror and a relatively clean countertop, so I dumped my bag out and rifled through my meager supplies. I hadn't been to my own house in two days now. I hadn't slept in my own bed since I'd arrived and everything I owned was still crammed in boxes. I kept recycling my current clothes from Andy's floor and they were starting to take on a distinctly rumpled look, though I had changed my standard black tee shirt for the backup that I always had shoved into the bottom of my bag. Same exact shirt - plain black crewneck tee, no frills, basic and uncomplicated and completely nondescript.

It wasn't an aesthetic so much as a depiction of my overall being. Or maybe I just had shitty fashion sense. Either way it left a lot to be desired.

At least it smelled relatively fresh.

A quick wash of the hotspots that morning at Andy's had been enough for now - _whore bath_ gramma used to call it in that gloriously judgmental tone she always had, slapping the pits and bits with a wet rag - but god was I craving a long hot shower with soap and shampoo and a razor and something other than a cold hardwood floor to step out onto. A nice thick towel wouldn't have gone unappreciated either. But for the moment I had a borrowed bathroom behind a taxidermist's showroom, and if I hurried I could get out before I started to think about what probably went on in there.

On my way out I stopped for a second to thank the taxidermist. Steve. If I was going to be peeing in Steve's establishment three times a day and exchanging that stupid dime back and forth with him for the next twelve months I figured I should get on a good basis with him from the start and a little small talk and pleasantry was as good a place as any to kick it off. He was yet another in a long line of not-hard-to-look-at Midwestern men who seemed to people this end of town, and I could almost overlook the fact that his beefy tattooed arms were covered to the elbows in the blood of the unidentifiable animal currently on the workstation in front of him. Almost. I cringed when he shoved a grimy hand into the pocket of his jeans and fished out the dime, tossing it across the table to me.

"What's with the coin anyway?" I asked him, keeping my distance the best I could without looking wimpishly squeamish; he was sloshing something nasty smelling all over a five foot radius around himself and I'd just finished washing one man's splashed fluids off my person, I wasn't in the mood to start over with another batch. He looked up at me and grinned a deviously sexy little grin.

"You know, like Aldi's."

"Yeah, Aldi's, I get that. The whole quarter thing. Is it an in-joke that I'm never going to be in on?"

"Naw, I mean...one time Andy comes in here and he falls asleep back there in the john, just curls up and takes a nap. Nobody can find him for, like, three hours, and Chief puts out an APB and everything 'cuz the kid's only supposed to be getting coffee, right? Ten minutes, twenty max. And he's back there sacked out on the countertop with his head on the sink, dreamin' about puppies or weed or something. Did this every afternoon for about a week before they caught on."

"Sounds about right."

"So it became this thing, because Chief about had a multiple coronary. You go in, you gimme the dime first. If anybody goes missing we check to see if I still have the dime. If I got it, somebody's in the can."

I stared at him for a good thirty seconds, just in unadulterated awe at the profound ridiculousness that kept compounding itself all around me. "Oh my god. What's wrong with just knocking on the door and asking if anybody's in there?"

He laughed and rubbed a big paw across his forehead, leaving a streak of something I didn't want to identify from temple to eyebrow. "We're big on tradition around here."

"You're big on unnecessarily complicated rituals is what you're big on."

"Yeah, that too." He laughed softly and proceeded to shove his entire arm up the ass end of whatever that was laying on the table. "Gives us something to do."

As much as I would have loved to stand around in a shop full of macabre stuffed dead things discussing the problems inherent in owning a bathroom that people regularly disappeared into for hours on end with a man who looked like Superman and Winnie The Pooh's illicit love child, the day was beckoning with its middle finger to remind me that Creeley was waiting, like a soldier with an arsenal of sexist insults primed and ready for launch.

Couldn't be late for that.

I gingerly picked up the suspiciously sticky dime and gave Steve a wave on my way out. The way he was fisting that deceased badger was making me feel weird, and the truth of it was that I wasn't even sure if it was a good weird or a bad weird.

Two days in Wefingerdeadthings and my _this-is-fucked-up_ scale was already in need of heavy recalibration.

I knew the second I stepped back into the station that it was officially on with Creeley. He looked up, his eyes settling for a second on my mouth, then he stood up and yanked his coat off the back of his chair. "Nice lipstick," he said as he pulled it on. "It'd look good on my dick."

Andy's head shot up from inside the cell where he was on his knees doing something to the door with a screwdriver, his mouth falling open in a pained sort of dismay. "Geezus Christ Creeley."

"What? She's not gonna be here long enough to file a report."

"Doesn't mean you can talk to her like that."

Cree turned around and redirected his attack. "You? Hairy stop sign with a perma-hardon? Ain't slept in his own bed since last February? Lecturin' me about respectin' women?"

Sarah slammed a file down on her desk and pushed her little half glasses up on her nose. There was no way this wasn't going to be good. "You can sleep with every female in town and be a respecter of women, Creeley. It's not that hard and Andy seems to manage it without much trouble." She smiled indulgently at Andy and he might as well have exploded with sunbeams, grinning like a little kid being doted on by his favorite aunt. "Every woman in Montblanc County loves him."

The snort from Cree's nose carried every bit of the rude derision you'd expect from a misogynistic creep being ganged up on for his poor behavior. I knew what was going to come out of his mouth next would be bad, it couldn't be anything but. But I expected it to be directed at Andy, and I certainly wasn't expecting the form his words actually ended up taking.

"Yeah well I see he hasn't managed to turn you straight yet."

Yeah, nope - I hadn't expected that at _all._ But not a soul in the room seemed shocked aside from me, so I choked off my gasp and just stood there, waiting to see what was going to happen next. Shots had been fired in multiple directions but nobody had fallen yet.

I wasn't disappointed. Sarah took a deep breath, sat back, dropped her glasses on the desk, and let it rip.

"He hasn't _tried,_ you colossal manbaby. Because - dumdedummm - _he respects women_. However, if I was going to choose a man to turn me straight - provided such a thing was either possible or desirable - and the final choices were you and Andy and somehow Andy got disqualified, I would shoot you in the dick and go down on Margaret Thatcher."

Cree looked confused for a minute, then squinted like he was struggling to come up with a retort. Finally he just said, "Margaret Thatcher is dead."

"And my point is made."

The entire station was silent for a full five seconds before Cade lost it. The cackling started out low and quiet, but quickly escalated to a wall shaking volume accompanied by him kicking his boots against his desk like an overjoyed child. Cree shook his head, not quite acknowledging defeat but not trying to claim an undeserved victory either, which was big of him, considering. He clutched his chest theatrically. "Ooh, ouch."

Andy hadn't stopped working on the cell door the entire time and gave the bars a hard crack with the butt end of his screwdriver. "Cree you should tell Greta you're sorry."

"For what?"

"It's okay Andy, my feelings aren't hurt, believe me." I was more worried about him getting his head knocked into the wall than having my sensibilities assaulted by the likes of Creeley, but something about Andy standing up to someone that size on my behalf was...warming in the heart vicinity, whatever that indicated. There the goofy guy went again, making me feel things I wasn't prone to laying out the welcome mat for. Cree huffed loudly and jabbed a dismissive thumb toward me.

"Yeah, see? She's not a fragile little buttercup like some people around here."

Sarah stood up with her stack of files and headed for the lone filing cabinet in the hallway, firing off a parting shot over her shoulder as she passed Cade's desk. "I dare say she's got a bigger dick than just about any of you."

"That oughtta make her perfect for you then Pearl."

"Alright Cree that's enough. Everybody shut up." Chief was back, standing in the doorway to his office again with that familiar _I need whiskey and quaaludes_ expression sitting hard on his handsome face. It seemed to be his standard posture, the position from which his power was projected.

Either that or he was scared to come all the way into the room.

"Cree, Morley, get gone," he barked, nodding his head toward the door. "Cree you make sure she learns the lay of the land."

"Aye aye Chief."

"Andy you got that lock ready yet?"

"Workin' on it Chief."

"Cade - ?"

Cade stood up quickly and grabbed his Thermos. "I'm gone, Chief."

And like that the main room was cleared except for Sarah, who went back to her desk and resumed her paperwork like nothing had happened. She shot me a conspiratorial little wink, just a quick one, before she put her glasses back on and defaulted back to pretending like none of us existed.

"Oh my god I gotta piss so bad I can taste it."

All the roads in this damn town looked the same - odd linear layout, dotted with rattly old gingerbread houses and snow, so _so_ much snow. I didn't bother looking over at my unwelcome passenger, I knew he'd just be doing something specifically designed to gross me out. "Shut up Creeley."

"I mean it, gimme a bottle or somethin'."

"NO! Oh god do _not_ take that thing out in this car - I'll pull over. Point me to a gas station."

"Gas station. Heh. Ain't no gas stations around this end of town." He fidgeted in his seat, making a show of stretching halfway across into my personal space while he adjusted the front of his jeans in as obnoxiously lewd a manner as he could manage in the restrictive confines of the passenger side. "Man that third coffee was a bad idea."

"Hold it. Sit on your foot or something."

"That only works if you've got internal excretory parts. I'm sure you've noticed mine are on the outside." He shut up for a few seconds and I thought, stupidly, that he might stay silent long enough for me to get a grip on the bad mood that had been brewing behind my carefully curated resting bitch face for the past two hours...but a few seconds was unsurprisingly the maximum extent of his self control. "Not kiddin' here Morley, I'm aboutta blow like Old Faithful."

"I swear to god Creeley - "

Something orange darted in front of the car before I could turn loose on him, nicking the driver side bumper with a heavy thud before changing direction and charging off the other way. I slammed on the brakes and sent us into a tightly managed straight skid for about thirty feet before the half-bald tires finally found some traction and grabbed on. I'm not ashamed to admit it did my heart good to see Cree immediately regret not having his seatbelt on - he flopped back into his seat and gave me a withering glare, rubbing at the red mark the dashboard left on his forehead before the orange thing standing in front of the car blinking at us caught his attention.

"Well I'll be damned, it's Elsie."

I grabbed the wheel and pulled myself forward until my face was almost against the windshield and screamed at the gigantic goat monster that had declared itself my nemesis. "I HATE YOU!!!"

Cree started laughing. "Get it out girl, let it all go, primal therapy bullshit, answer the call of your menses or what the fuckever."

"SHUT UP!!"

And then the most bizarre thing happened. The door on my side flew open and two hands reached into the car, grabbing me by the front of my coat and yanking me out of the vehicle with such abrupt force that I couldn't even put a thought together before I was hauled to my feet and slammed against the hood. My shoes slipped on the icy street and on my way down I caught a glimpse of a big round red-cheeked face glaring down at me from inside the hood of a bright orange fur-lined parka.

_"Du slo min jævla lama!"_

"What?!?"

"He says you hit his fuckin' llama."

_"What??!"_

I was scrambling to my feet, slipping and falling and failing embarrassingly to regain my footing while this huge damn wampa in Patagonia outerwear stomped around to the other side of the car, bitching in some weird gutteral language I couldn't understand a word of while Creeley leaned on the door on his side of the vehicle and laughed his fool ass off like this was the greatest thing he'd ever seen. The wampa stopped and slammed his hand down on the roof of the car, pointing at me over the top of it. _"Hvem tror du at du er, ku?"_

"What's he saying?"

"Wants to know who the hell you think you are, plus some nasty bits. I think he called you a stupid whore."

"Tell him I'm one of you!"

Cree shrugged. "Sorry, I don't speak Norwegian."

"Norwegian??"

_"Jævla ludder!"_

I didn't have a clue what that last bit translated to in English, but the look on Creeley's face was pure glee so it couldn't have been anything good. And then the lunatic from Norway snapped the antenna off the hood of the car and came at me with it.

"Holy fuck what is wrong with you?!?"

Cree threw his head back and _howled_ while this nutcase charged me. I've never wanted to kill a man so badly in my entire life as I did when he sniggeringly shouted "Run Morley!" and leaned back on the car with his thick arms crossed across his massive chest, grinning and watching this frigging psycho chase me across the damn street with a car antenna.

My second day on the job wasn't going to win any awards for improvement, I knew this in my soul.

In the end I just had to outrun the jackass. I hadn't gotten a good look at him but he seemed to be older and about the size and shape of a mall Santa gone to seed, so I had a slight advantage in the speed department - but that was all I had, because ice wasn't my friend and he was obviously a local. I was maybe two blocks away with him in a heavyfooted breathless pursuit when Creeley cruised up alongside me in the car and rolled the window down.

"By the way that's Red Hanrahan you're runnin' from. Best make nice with him since you're gonna be takin' Elsie back to his place one of these days, if you ever catch her."

"Shut up and stop the car." I grabbed the back door handle but it wouldn't open. "Unlock the damn doors!!"

"Naw, I'm good."

_"Unlock the goddamn door!!"_

"I'm just gonna cruise on down the road here to Ted's, take that whiz I been throttlin', then I'll come back and pick you up on my way back to the station. How's that sound?"

"UNLOCK THE FUCKING DOOR CREELEY!!"

If there's one thing I know in my heart of hearts it's that I don't have to tell you what Creeley ended up doing, because human nature is always the one indisputable factor in any and every equation you could ever come up with. 

Chief was sitting on Sarah's desk when I tore into the station like a tornado on methamphetamines, limping and furious and frozen and just about one more human rights infraction away from molotov cocktailing the entire town. He looked up and the smile froze on his face when he saw my mood plastered all the hell over me.

"Everything alright Morley?"

"No everything is not alright, _Chief._ I want to ask you something."

His back straightened just a little, but he didn't move from the desk. "Okay, shoot."

"Bad choice of words. BAD choice of words." I took a deep breath and prepped both barrels, because I was an inch past had enough and Chief Tommy Davis of the Weesucksobad PD was pissing me off with that ridiculously good looking face and that stupidly well put together body and those infuriatingly sexy eyes that had no damn business being so insanely blue. But most of all I was having trouble processing the way his sheepishly heated gaze had drifted down to my midsection while I was standing between his knees that morning, playing doctor with his injured finger and struggling to hold onto my animosity toward him, while avoiding coming to terms with the fact that I wanted more than just about anything to ravage him in some spectacularly disgusting way.

I'd failed at both, and he'd sent me out in the car with Creeley, and now I had red welts across the backs of my knees as a twisted result of it all.

At that moment I hated him as much as it was possible to hate someone I wanted to go to bed with.

And my fury had finally hit its boiling point.

"Have you ever been hit with a fucking car antenna?! _Have you??_ Have you ever had some degenerate old Slytherin dressed like a traffic cone whip the shit out of you with one of those goddamn bendy steel riding crops? Because I'm here to tell you you will _never_ have anything sting worse in your entire worthless life _I promise you that._ He didn't even respect my safe word and on top of that I had to run two goddamn blocks till he keeled over - and when I went back to see if he was dead he gave me this!" I pulled my hair back to show him the long stinging red stripe up the side of my neck and across my ear where the old fart had swatted me when I bent over what I'd assumed was his deceased corpse. "What the _hell is wrong_ with everyone in this town?!"

Chief was trying not to laugh, I have to at least give him credit for that.

"I take it you met Red."

"Yeah I met Red." I spun around and jabbed a finger at Cree as he came through the door behind me. "And _this_ fucking reprobate let him assault me and sat there laughing his ass off while he bent that thing in half and popped me across the backs of the thighs with it!"

Chief looked hard at Creeley, but there wasn't even a flicker of condemnation in his face. Goddamn boys club. But before I had time to get a good head of righteously indignant steam going about Big Boys Solidarity the door flew open with a blast of frigid air, followed by the raspy bellow of a very cheerful Saint John Davis - three hours late and wearing a lacy pink shirt that obviously didn't belong to him under his open leather jacket. The way it was straining across his broad chest betrayed more details about his morning sleep-in than any of us cared to know. Some hungover female would no doubt be staggering in to work at the grocers right about then, wearing whatever shirt Saint had left on her floor when he'd taken hers.

"Good morning pickle jar!"

It was impossible not to admire the perky attitude that man could manage to pull out of a morning-after migraine. He stretched theatrically with an overdone yawn, not the least bit sheepish about what he was wearing, and gave me an amused wink that didn't do anything to hide the barely suppressed laughter in his voice. "Somebody met Red?"

Cree was standing at the door of the cell where Andy was still working, reaching through the bars to flick his hair every few seconds, just being a bothersome dick and giggling like a nine year old thumping a cat's ear every time Andy swatted at him. "You should'a heard her yelp. Sounded like a dolphin, you know that sound they make when they jump outta the water?"

"Geezus." Saint offered me a sympathetic grimace. "Back of the knees?"

"Just below the ass."

He sucked in his breath and flinched hard. "Goddamn. Did we lose another antenna?"

Cree flicked one of Andy's stray curls and took a hard crack to the knuckles with Andy's screwdriver in retribution. Then he did an animated impersonation of the old man swinging at me with the world's most unorthodox weapon of choice and ended up dissolving into giggles. "Snapped that fucker in half."

Saint's head whipped around with one eyebrow cocked in a kind of open admiration. Apparently taking a metal rod to the back of the legs was proof of worthiness around these parts. "Guess you've been initiated, girl. You survive a spankin' from Red Hanrahan, you can take just about anything."

"I'm honored."

"Every one of us except Kevin's taken a whippin' from that old man at some point. You're one of us now." He raised an open hand and waited for me to slap it - and though being _one of us_ was just about the last thing on my list of immediate life goals that I was willing to take a thrashing for, I reached up and slapped palms with him.

Having Saint on my side was a stroke of luck I couldn't take for granted.

I noticed Chief watching us from Sarah's desk and made a snap decision to turn this creepy little initiation ceremony into an opportunity to prod him just a little bit more in his overactive envy gland...because if there was one thing I'd gleaned as undeniable truth from that morning's encounter in Andy's kitchen, it was the thrilling discovery that Chief, in all his quiet Gary Cooper stoic manliness, was a jealous little boy underneath it all.

I turned my undivided attention to his brother.

"So what's that mean? The pickle jar thing."

Saint gestured around the room in a wide sweeping motion with both hands. "This place, it's like a jar of Vlasic. Full of salt and vinegar and smells funny."

There was an odd sort of poetic truth to that that I couldn't deny. "Well, I know which one of you isn't kosher."

Andy burst out laughing and a second later a loud bang made us both spin around to see Cree donkey-kick the cell door as he was walking away from it; it slammed shut with a hollow thud followed immediately by the sickening thump of a body hitting the floor. The room went up in a collective _Oh yikes_ sort of gasp and we all stood there, staring at the pile of arms and legs crumpled in the middle of the cell, while Cree turned around and let out a huge put-upon sigh.

"Oh christ I killed Andy again."

I looked at Saint and said "Again?" at the same exact moment Chief looked at me and said,

_"Safe word?"_

_To be continued..._


	16. Gettin' Ojibwe Wit It

"Do you want to file assault charges against Red?"

I sat down gingerly at my desk - the backs of my legs were starting to sting like they'd been slapped with a steel rod, probably because they _had_ \- and thought about it for a second. It hadn't really entered my mind, I'd been too busy being mad about the entire incident to consider any retaliation against the cranky old bat. It was an undeniable truth that I hadn't been able to round up his animal yet, but to be fair, he hadn't done much to keep it from getting out in the first place. Responsible pet ownership was an enforceable requirement back home, but around this place it was obviously a wild game of anything goes and screw you if the consequences inconvenience you in any way.

I looked over at Sarah, sitting there at her desk across the room, staring expectantly at me over the tops of her glasses.

It felt like a trap. A test maybe - to see what I was made of, to determine whether I was actually going to be accepted or if the boys club was going to keep the front door closed. A year was a long damn time to be the outsider. And as of right that moment I wasn't so sure I had the nervous fortitude to stick to my determination about beating them at their own game...mainly because I'd been here for a total of two days and I'd already been called out for sleeping with a co-worker, chased embarrassingly by a dog, humiliatingly outrun by a low-grade criminal who was allowed to walk out after an afternoon in an unlocked cell, and had the shit soundly whipped out of me by an old man with a horrifyingly creative fifty shades fetish.

Two days.

I was starting to feel the bitter sting of defeat.

Or maybe that was just the welts on my ass.

The question now was - had anyone _else_ ever filed charges? I felt like that was the important part of this equation, what might separate me from the others or solidify me in their midst.

Everyone was looking at me.

"How many people has he attacked?"

Everyone except Kevin raised their hand. Andy raised both of his. The angry red bump on his cheekbone from the cell door was making him look like a good candidate for plaintiff himself, but whatever went on between him and Cree was their business. All I knew was the backs of my legs and my left ear were stinging like fire, and everyone was staring at me like I was getting ready to tell them something important.

I didn't have anything important. But I did have a steadily building rage, and I figured that was enough.

"Has anybody else sued him for battery with weird weapons?"

Their stares all turned to each other, and Andy looked at me like he was the purveyor of some great and profound knowledge I should already have. "He's the mayor, Greta."

 _"That psycho is the mayor?_ You're joking, right?" A quick scan of every face in the room gave me exactly the answer I should have expected. "Oh my god you're not joking."

Sarah tossed a pen onto her desk, and in the sudden silence the clinky little thud seemed all too much like a harbinger of oncoming doom. "He's also currently the guy in charge of our station budget."

Yup, there it was.

"Oh for fucks sake, this can't be real. He didn't even speak English. He's a goat farmer."

"Llamas."

"Whatever Kevin. All I know is he called me a stupid whore and vandalized both station property and _my_ personal property, also known as my _ass,_ and something needs to be done about him."

"Why don't you just sleep with him?" Cree interrupted with a snide little chuckle. "You didn't have any trouble hoppin' into Slimjim here's bed on day one."

You had to hand it to the damn logging truck, he definitely knew how to derail a conversation. "Unlock the guns Chief," I hissed, staring the big guy down like he wasn't a full foot taller than me with a hundred pound advantage. "I know you've got some somewhere."

Cree aimed a finger at me and made a little _kapow_ sound.

"Alright, everybody just shut up." Chief huffed out a very put-upon sigh that told me he'd been through this more times than he liked to think about, raking a hand through his hair so hard the curly bits in front stood up straight. "How about I make Red apologize?"

"Tell him to apologize to my ass."

"If that's what it takes."

"No - " I held a hand up and shook my finger at him, so close to my limit that I could feel my throat getting sore with all the screaming I was about to start doing. "I mean it, I want to file a report. I don't care if he's the Mayor. I don't care if he personally signs every paycheck that goes out that door on Friday and you're all in the food stamp line on Monday, myself included. I want that man sitting in that jail cell waiting for his court date, even if I have to go out and arrest his insane ass with a taser and wrestle it into the back seat of the car on my own. Andy!!"

Andy jumped like somebody had set off an air horn next to his head. "Yes ma'am?"

"I hope you got that lock installed because this one's not gonna walk out at quitting time!"

Saint whistled, one of those _Ohhhh shit boy-howdy_ type whistles while he turned around to exchange raised eyebrows with Creeley. Cree shrugged. "I still think you oughtta just sleep with him."

Chief was obviously deep in thought, leaning there against his office doorway rubbing his face like a man about to take a test for a kind of math he hasn't used since junior high. He nodded slowly and stepped back, making room in the doorway - and I knew he was about to tell me to come in.

I didn't want to go in. I wanted him to say _Okay, that's what we'll do then._ I wanted him to say _You're right, take Cade and go bring him in._ I wanted him to check Andy's handiwork and declare the cell escape-proof and make arrangements for someone to install bars on the damn window over the cot. I wanted -

Well, I wanted a lot of things. Like to go home, and to have my record wiped clean, and for Joe to be sitting at his desk in the morning bugging me about putting too much cream in my coffee, and waiting for the day's assignments to go out so we could get in the car where we belonged and do what we loved, and then take his kid out for burgers and ice cream and go home for some Netflix before falling asleep in my own apartment, in my own bed, in my own pajamas.

No offense to Andy and his size 52 skinny superlongs.

And maybe I wanted Chief to reach out and touch me in some comforting way, even if it was just a fingertip on my elbow, to make me feel a little bit better.

I knew I wasn't going to get any of that.

I wasn't about to be quiet about any of it though. And I wasn't going to let this go, and I wasn't going to write anything off just to be accepted by this fucking zoo full of rabid cackling hyenas on crack and high fructose corn syrup. I'd rock the goddamn boat until it flipped over if I had to.

My nerve was back with a vengeance, and Creeley was staring at me with the ass-rattling stare of a predator who wants to slap his prey around for a while before severing its jugular. But Andy was standing behind him, and the worried pleading look on his sweet face over Creeley's shoulder was enough - just barely - to stop me from picking up that damn shortcircuiting microwave and hurling it at the neanderthal's head.

Maybe tomorrow.

I raised my chin and walked into Chief's office.

"At least Andy bought you a drink first before he pulled out the weird implements, huh."

That wasn't funny. Okay...yes it was, but I wasn't about to smile and I sure as hell wasn't going to laugh. Chief was making an effort, halfassed though it might have been, to lighten the situation and I couldn't condemn him for that. I'd find something eventually, but it wouldn't be that.

"That man is a menace."

"Andy or Red?"

"Stop playing with me Chief, I'm in no mood for any more bullshit. Tell me right now why this place doesn't abide by the rules of the universe or I'm pulling papers on all of you, the entire operation. Who's your higher-up? And I don't mean Red fucking Hanrahan, I mean your superior officer."

He sat down and leaned back in his chair, crossing his hands on his ribcage and just staring at me with that hot blue look of his. He wasn't in any hurry to move this thing along and I could tell right away that that was going to get on my tits in a really big way. "You want my superior officer."

"Yes."

"What if I told you I don't have one?"

"I'd say you're full of shit."

He grinned. Something weird was up, I could feel it, but I couldn't put my finger anywhere near it. Something just wasn't _right_ about this place, but before I started thinking I'd actually died in that car crash and was sitting in the waiting room between heaven and hell while my papers were being notarized, I needed to address that damn smile of his or find a way to get rid of it. It was getting into my panties when it should have been pissing me off.

I narrowed my eyes and stared him down.

It was a good ten seconds of deeply uncomfortable sustained eye contact before he finally broke. "So old Red disrespected your safe word, huh?"

"Oh my god, _that's_ what you're taking out of this situation? _That?"_

"If I'm going to be filing papers against the guy I need to know all of your grievances. Ignoring a safe word sounds pretty serious."

He was _mocking_ me. If there was one thing in the entire goddamn world that sent me around the bend, it was being mocked. "You are unbelievable."

"Come on."

"No, I'm not letting this go - "

"I know. But I mean come on. Like _come on."_ He stood up and pushed his chair out of the way, motioning for me to come around behind his desk. And I'm intensely ashamed to admit that the first place my head went to was me on my back with my legs around his neck, knocking his pencil cup and coffee mug onto the floor in a clattering mess of scattered office supplies and lewd giggles from the other side of the door.

But he was opening the window behind the desk, hiking a leg to climb through it.

"Where are we going?"

"Just shut up and come on."

I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I followed him.

"You do this every day at lunch hour?"

"Pretty much, yeah." The icy lot out back of the station wasn't what I'd low-key hoped for when Chief indicated we were going to sneak out for a while - but when he opened the back hatch of his Jeep and pulled out his hockey stick, all the images in my head of going back to his place for some afternoon nookie went straight out the window we'd gone out ourselves. He dropped a puck on the ice and took a swing at it, thwacking it across the lot with an echoing crack, and a smile edged across his face the second the stick made contact. "Or I go to the cafe, depends on who's in the kitchen that day. Today's Wednesday. George." He screwed up his face in a look of such immense displeasure I almost laughed.

"George must suck."

He nodded with a weary resignation. "George does indeed suck." He walked across the ice to retrieve his puck, slapping it around in a way that made me think of a cat playing with a mouse. No, not a mouse - there was nothing sinister in Chief, none of that mischievous cruelty that made me use the same analogy with Creeley. Chief was more of a domestic house cat batting its feather weasel across the kitchen floor. Cree was a semi-feral alley cat hunting for something to abuse for a while before he ate it.

Something in me sure wanted to be a feather weasel. And watching this man play around on the ice wasn't doing anything to solve my current drama but I couldn't stop watching him, so surefooted on the slick glassy surface that I wanted to check the bottoms of his feet for suction cups. "Were you all born on ice or something? I can't keep my legs under me on that stuff."

"You get used to it. But yeah, me and John, we're from up north. Lotta snow and ice." He jerked his head toward some distant place, like that should provide enough details to satisfy me. I had no idea what else was north other than the place I was standing. I'd been to Sacramento, that was about as far up I'd ever gone.

"Are you really from a place called Moosejaw?"

"Yup."

"You people and your names, geezus. The street signs in this town hurt my tongue."

"They're Ojibwe."

"Yeah I know, Andy told me. I don't know what Ojiggery is though." He glanced at me over his shoulder as he slapped the puck around on the ice and I could have sworn there was something like fond amusement on his face. I didn't need any of that, not while I was trying to assert some authority and convince this man that Red Hanrahan needed the electric chair. But that damn look scrambled my thoughts just enough to make me forget what I was about to say, and since my mouth was already open I just rolled with what I had. "You and Saint are really brothers?"

"Weird, I know."

"Well, I mean..." He stopped and turned to look at me, waiting to hear what I was about to say with a sort of anticipatory curiosity that made my cheeks feel warm. "He's sort of...a biker dude. And you're - "

One eyebrow went up and he leaned on his stick, patiently waiting.

"And you're not."

He didn't seem satisfied with my summation, but he didn't press for more and turned his attention to rewrapping his finger with his stick balanced against the crook of his shoulder. He'd traded the whiskey-soaked bandanna for what looked like a long rope of toilet paper and it was coming unwrapped. It was a tough sell convincing myself not to risk going out on the ice to help him.

I knew this ploy. Men were notorious for being helplessly shit at things they wanted women to do for them. And though Chief seemed genuinely useless at wrapping wounds, I stood my ground and stayed put.

"Is his name Saint or John or Sinjin? Everybody calls him something different, I can't keep up."

"He was christened Saint John. You can call him whatever you like, he'll usually answer."

"Saint though - ? What kind of name is that?"

He sniffed and looked up at the sky; it was starting to snow again. "I dunno. Catholic I guess."

"And you? Are you Saint Thomas?"

"The Doubter." There was something sparkly and good humored in his eyes and I waited for him to tell me how the name suited him, but instead he tugged the collar of his coat up around his face and looked away. "Naw. Just Tommy."

Well that was disappointing. I was hoping he would incorrectly label something as a metaphor again so I could staunch the sudden swell of admiration I was feeling with a suitably smug bit of schooling, but these people weren't big on giving me what I wanted. For a mediocre male in a shitty situation though, he was growing on me with his quiet brand of offhanded humility and that goddamned homegrown likability that fairly jumped off him and slapped me every time he looked at me.

And those insanely hot blue eyes.

It was time to drag this rodeo back to the current bull in the pen. "Well I don't know why we're out here, _just Tommy_ \- but if you're planning to convince me to drop the Mayor Red thing, you can just...keep slapping your little pucky thing around. I'm going back in, it's cold as fuck out here. Goddamn beer fridge in Satan's rec room."

Chief suddenly pointed to his forehead, at a two-inch long vertical scar above his left eye that was paled with age but had left a definite visible dent. "See this? Took a puck square to the frontal lobe in '92 playing backyard ice against a retired sumo wrestler. Got high-sticked in the throat in '02, was unconscious and on a ventilator for two days with that one. And I took a header off Constance MacHenry's chimney in 2009 and damn near broke my back. But it took getting bodychecked into a concrete wall by a man I call my friend to make me take a long look at my life and realize you gotta grow up some time." 

"Well that just sounds...very old man of you." I stared at him, sort of awestruck at how beautiful he looked with snowflakes settling in his hair like a halo of heavendust before it occurred to me that he'd just hit me with something personal. "Why'd you tell me all that?"

He shrugged. "Life lesson thing. You said you didn't want people to expect anything from you, yesterday. Also it's maybe a little bit about what happened today."

"Ah, I see - you think I've got some growing up to do." I nodded, maybe a bit condescendingly. I mean...he wasn't entirely wrong, but some things just shouldn't be overlooked. "Are you saying I'm supposed to be the bigger man and let Red off the hook? Because that's complete bullshit and you know it."

"Nope. Red needs to behave, I've had this conversation with him before. What I'm saying is - " He leaned over to pick up the puck and I saw that same flinch of pain that he hadn't been able to hide the day before. "You should calm down a little and get your head together before you start trying to take down the entire system. Because no offense Morley but you're one person, and you just got here."

He shrugged, for punctuation I guess, and not one single thought came into my head that I could use to dispute his argument. I knew he was right. But I was still mad, my left ear was on fire, my ass was sore from an unholy combination of Andy's overenthusiastic attentions and Red's psychotic behavior, and I didn't want this stupidly gorgeous man making sense at my expense. Not while I was in a killing mood.

Changing the subject seemed like a less frustrating option than admitting he had a point. "Who was the friend?"

"Friend?"

"The one that ran you through a wall."

"Ah." An odd little expression crossed his face, almost like a fond reminiscence. "Cree." He hefted himself up onto the hood of the Jeep with a sigh and shoved a hand into his coat pocket, fishing out a little clear bag holding a half dozen or so pre-rolled joints. I watched in disbelief as he leaned back against the windshield and fired one up. After a long draw, he raised one eyebrow at me. “We never talk about this again, understood?”

“You do realize you’re a cop, right?”

“It’s for the pain.”

“What pain?”

He took another deep draw on the blunt and sat up, sliding down the hood till he could hook his boot heels on the grill, dropping his head back for a long moment of silence before he opened his mouth and let a lungful of smoke drift lazily over his face. “2006, I’m shooting side flank against the Southside Tankers, Creeley’s guarding goal and comes out of the endzone to take me out while my eyes are on the puck. Broadsides me into the glass. Cervical rupture and herniation of discs three and four, concussion, cerebrospinal contusion. I lost four degrees of side vision on the left." He stopped to take another deep puff and held it, letting it leak slowly out of the side of his mouth as he tilted his head to look at me. "That’s why I’m a cop now. Can’t play professional hockey if you can’t see what’s coming up on you.” 

“But apparently it’s fine if you’re a cop.” 

“That’s why I’m Chief.”

Wow...I really couldn't think of anything worthwhile to say to him. _Sorry Cree's a dick? If I stay on your left side I can get away with flipping you off because you can't see me?_ It was hard resisting the urge to test it out, but with my luck he'd have been joking and I'd be busted. But Chief was talking, and I wanted him to keep it up for as long as possible. He had a nice voice, sort of deep and smooth with something just barely raspy underneath it that made me feel a bit shivery listening to it. “Creeley did that to you? And you hired him to work here?” 

“Figured it’s best to keep people who want to kill you close by. Plus I already know how hard he can hit.” He took another long drag on the joint and then held it out to me, and I took it without hesitation. I hadn't had a smoke since the night Hawk rousted a stash off an informant and we'd gone up to the roof of the administration building to fire it up.

Way too damn long.

“It’s good.”

“Andy grows it.”

“Yeah I figured. Is anyone in this department _not_ a low grade criminal?”

"Pretty much just me." I laughed in spite of myself. Seemed about right. "That's what I was there for," he continued, taking the joint back and inhaling the smoke from the lit end. "At Andy's, this morning. Twisted my back on the ice the other night."

A quick flashback to the wince of pain on his face when he was hitting the pucks - the night I'd embarrassed myself by coming onto him - flooded my head in an unwelcome play-by-play of cringe. "And then you slammed the car door on your finger."

"Yeah."

"Sucks to be you these days."

He dropped his head back. I could see him starting to relax, the smelly weed doing its designated job with admirable speed. "Indeed it does."

I knew I wasn't helping his stress levels any and I felt just a tiny bit bad about that. I knew he had a point about keeping an eye on your enemies, though I didn't really see how it applied to me and the moose farmer. The best way to keep him close would be to lock his ass in Andy's newly secure jail cell...but the part about hiring Creeley even though he'd tried to kill him seemed like it might be the one he was trying to drive home.

I was starting to feel pretty sorry for this guy. He hadn't asked for me to get exiled to his precinct, none of this was his fault. My somewhat misdirected vitriol was sitting kind of hard on the unfair side where he was concerned. "So what was the bad blood between you and Creeley? Let me guess - a woman?"

He nodded.

"Oh my god are you serious? I was joking...omg you _are_ serious." He nodded again, but didn't say anything. "You and Cree were after the same woman?"

"Not exactly."

"What then?"

"He's my brother in law. Ex." And with that bombshell he eased down off the hood of the car and picked up his stick to start knocking the ice off his boots, suddenly pretending like I wasn't there anymore.

But I was there, and he definitely had my attention now.

"Ohhh shit _you married Cree's sister?!_ Oh Chief I figured you for smarter than that. Does she look like him? I'm picturing her looking like him - dear god."

He hesitated like he was trying to rethink whatever was going through his head, but in the end lost the argument and reached inside his jeans pocket to tug out his wallet. A second later he tossed it toward me. When it stopped spinning on the ice I picked it up and looked at it while he turned toward the street lamp to stare up at the snow falling past the flickery bulb that was trying to kick on in the middle of the day, all silent and brooding and looking every bit like he didn't have anything else to say on the subject.

I didn't figure he was loaning me his credit card, so I opened the wallet and did a quick scan for a photo of some kind. And there it was, one frayed corner sticking up from behind his badge. A very worn little school-picture sized photo of him and a pretty dark haired woman, laughing at something that must have happened right before it was snapped.

She didn't look like Cree. And Chief looked younger than I'd have ever guessed he'd been in his life.

"Okay, the Neaderthal genetics bypassed her and ganged up on his surly ass, thank god." I closed the wallet and thought about tossing it back to him, but in the end just stood there holding it. It felt like maybe I should be showing that little frayed image a bit of respect, though I didn't know why. "Nasty breakup?"

Chief didn't say anything for a long time, just stood there staring at the snowflakes drifting slowly down to the ground. They were coming faster now. The dim light of the sun filtering through the heavy dark clouds cast a pale little glow across what I could see of his face and his eyelashes looked golden when he blinked. And then he raised his stick and gave that little puck an almighty slam that sent it flying clear to the other side of the lot.

I figured then that I knew what happened to Mrs Chief.

I laid the wallet on the hood of the car and headed back to the station without saying anything else. Anything more from me would have just sounded disrespectful, and Chief had just shared something with me that I doubted was anything less than sacred to him.

I had no idea what to do with that. 

_To be continued..._


	17. Livin' La Vida Lost & Found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to @chocolategate for being my consultant on the correct racial terminology for this chapter and answering some genuinely stupid questions :)

That night I crawled into Andy's bed and was looking for a good place to bite him when my phone buzzed from the bathroom.

"Wait for me," I ordered him as I clambered out of the bed. He rolled over and shoved his head under the pillow.

"Take your time. _Please._ No rush."

I slapped his ass on my way over him. "I'm gonna ride you like one of those Kentucky jockeys when I get back, don't start any good dreams."

He groaned, but it wasn't an _oooh can't wait_ sort of groan so much as the _Oh god I'm dying please let me get some shut eye before rigor mortis sets in_ kind. I yanked my tee shirt off over my head and threw it at him on my way to the bathroom. "You young guys don't have any stamina."

"You're killin' me Greta."

"I'll send your mother a nice condolence bouquet."

I was already half into the adjoining room when I heard him mutter from under the pillow, "Good luck findin' her."

The face on the screen of my phone gave me a little chill that was equal parts excitement and dread, because any time I saw it it meant I was either about to be shown a real good time or someone had died and I was going to have to fly to Sacramento with a black dress in my carry on. But the excitement won out and I squealed as I answered it. The noise echoed around in Andy's tiny little bathroom, amplifying against the ceramic tile surrounding the tub.

"Hey hermano!"

"Ow, damn. Hey, hermanita."

"Who's dead?"

He laughed, a big booming explosive laugh that made me move the phone away from my head. Fair was fair, now we both had a ruptured eardrum. "Nobody's dead, somebody's gotta be dead for me to check up on you?"

"Yeah, well, Uncle Marvin's getting up there ya know."

"Yeah and he's gonna be real mad if you don't show up for Thanksgiving. He'll be threatenin' to kick the bucket before Christmas."

I sighed. Uncle Marvin was going to have to make the mashed potatoes without me this year. "Doesn't look likely, Ant."

There was a long silence, and then his voice went quiet in that worrisome way it always did when he wanted to get someone by the throat. I'd seen it before, too many times - most recently when he found out Hawk had signed off on my exile. He'd never cared much for Hawk to begin with and that was the cement boots for him as far as Ant was concerned - he just needed to catch him in a dark alley somewhere to make it official. "You know I think you got a real shit deal there girl."

"I know. Not much I can do about it though."

"I'm comin' out there."

"What?" I almost dropped my phone, scrambling to keep it from clattering into the bathtub. I could hear Andy earning his trophy for world's fastest and deepest sleeper, already soundly passed out and snoring like a train in the adjoining room, completely oblivious to all the noise I was making twenty feet away from him. "Why?"

"I want to make sure you're being treated right. Your place got good locks? You have good wheels? They givin' you med benefits?"

"I'm fine, Ant. The department provided me a place and a vehicle. The house isn't bad." I could have been lying for all he knew - for that matter I could have been lying for all _I_ knew, since I hadn't really actually seen much of my house yet. I had wandered from the living room to the kitchen and back again in an angry huff before driving around town in that backfiring old truck till I found the bar, met Andy, and sort of...never went back.

I wasn't absolutely certain that I'd even shut the door behind me.

He didn't need to know any of that though.

"The Chief's the landlord and everything. And I'm not sure anybody here actually locks their doors...it's like Mayberry in this place, I swear to god. You don't have to come."

"What the fuck kind of mom and pop setup you workin' with up there? Your boss unclogs your toilet? Damn...already done anyway, I got my ticket."

"When?"

"Wednesday."

Andy stumbled into the bathroom to pee and I giggled a little bit when he sleepily nudged past me and tickled my stomach. Ant heard, and that judgmental older brother thing settled into his voice, familiar and reassuring even though I was actually the oldest of the two of us - a fact that never prevented him from getting up in my business every chance he got, and that included now. "Holy shit Gret, you already smashin' somebody?"

"Shhh, shut up. He's...he's a friend." I pushed past Andy back into the bedroom and pulled the bathroom door shut behind me. "Gotta make friends in a strange new world, right?"

"Yeah but most people just hang out and go to basketball games and shit. You ain't been there a week!"

"Who says that's not what we're doing?"

"I do because it's twelve in the a.m. there and I just heard pissin' and gigglin'."

I didn't say anything for a minute. Ant had always been about putting the fear of god and Anthony Morley into any guy brave enough to date me, but I wasn't in high school and Andy and I weren't dating. We were buddies who were comfortable enough with each other's company to include sex for the sake of it. And co-workers, but I wasn't about to tell him that. He wouldn't have approved, and he definitely wouldn't have understood how fast of an attachment I'd formed with this guy.

It _had_ been a fast attachment, something I definitely wasn't known for. But we'd formed it organically enough for it to feel the way we wanted it to. It suited us.

Or me, at least. I wasn't sure how Andy felt about any of it, but if his easygoing nature and laid-back acceptance of me in his bed were accurate indicators, it felt like a beautiful and very necessary friendship being kicked off in the midst of a ton of pointless bullshit. He was a bright spot poking through the clouds, a warm blanket wrapped around your shoulders when you've been caught out in the rain. It was what I needed, even if it showed up in the form of a way too tall, way too skinny, way too hairy twenty-something with a weird accent and a backstory nobody seemed to want to share with me.

Even if that wasn't really the form I was wishing it had taken.

_I'm not going to go to bed with you Morley, lets just take that off the table right now._

"Remember what you used to tell me when we were kids? About strangers?"

I could hear Ant stretching out on his bed all the way out in LA, settling in for the night. "If you're lost, look around for somebody that's smiling - but not at you."

"Yeah. This guy was smiling out the window at the snow. I guess I stared at him for a good five minutes, just sort of wishing I could feel a tenth of the contentment he had on his face. He seemed safe. Sorta...comfortable. And he's Irish, so, you know. Good drinking buddy."

He laughed, and when he spoke again his voice had gone all soft and quiet. "Were you lost?"

I thought about that night, my first night in Wesofullofshit. I was so angry. Angry and confused and frustrated and waving a middle finger at the world.

Lost?

Yeah. Never been more lost in my life, not even at Joe's funeral. I hadn't known Andy from Adam but the warmth had radiated off him when he sat down next to me, and I had finally stopped shivering for the first time since I'd arrived in this iced-over pit. He hadn't said or done anything aggressive, and when we got to his place too drunk to walk straight it was me that put him against the wall. I remembered that part clearly, among all the fuzzy half-remembered bits that the whiskey laid its hazy filter over.

"Yeah, I was lost."

"What about now?"

I watched Andy shuffle sleepily back to the bed and fall across it, bouncing on the mattress with a groan. The strange little brown and white polkadotted baby quilt that was always on the bed fell halfway off onto the floor and he snaked a long arm out to pull it up under his head.

"Naw. I'm getting my feet under me."

"Good. Good...I'm glad. But I'm still coming out there."

Of course he was.

"Of course you are."

"And I'm gonna check this guy out, he better be treatin' you good."

I looked across the room at Andy. Sound asleep, with no idea of what I had planned for him for the rest of the night. I wondered what Chief was doing with his evening.

"I'm sure you will."

I heard him tap the phone, knew he had kissed his finger and was sending it to me over the miles. Good old Ant.

"G'nite hermanita."

"Nite hermano." 

Andy opened one eye when I shoved my head under the pillow next to him, bumping my nose up against his to plant a little bite on his beardy chin. "Did I seem lost the first time you saw me?"

"You mean yesterday?"

"I mean two - no wait, it's been three days, technically. Three days ago. At the bar."

He stretched, looking every bit like one of those ridiculously long and likewise ridiculously adorable ferret things waking up from a nap. "You weren't crying for your mom. I figured you knew where you were."

"But I mean, like...cosmically speaking, did I seem lost?"

"Well, yeah. But don't we all?"

He had me there. In lieu of getting into anything too deeply rooted in human nature I decided to take the shallower route to where I wanted to be. I didn't know a lot about this guy beyond his bedroom skills and the fact that he could run fast and puke hard, and with my brother coming to town I was going to have to do better than that. "Why are you here?"

"It's my house."

Not that shallow.

"I mean _why_ are you _here?"_

"My dad fucked my mom, I'm guessing."

I gave him a smack on the leg and he playfully put his hand over my face; I tugged it down and he let me shove it back into his own face. His fingers were so long they reached from his chin to the top of his head and all I truly wanted in that moment was to have them doing just awful, _awful_ things to me. "I mean in Weenieballsack. Why are you _here?_ You're from Ireland, right? This is a long way from home for you."

"Ah. A bizarre and twisted series of unfortunate events."

"Are you implying that Count Olaf is after you?"

"Sort of." He seemed to be thinking about it for a second, then laughed a little and turned onto his back. "Who's Herman?" 

He obviously didn't want to answer my question; there was something under all the playful evasion that went beyond simply missing the point, but I was more interested at the moment in all the other things he could be doing with his mouth besides talking. "Hermano. My brother." His blank look made me laugh and I thought about giving him a little bit of a rough time, but something about the way he was laying there, so long that his feet were hanging off the end of the bed with his head overshooting the pillow, struck me funny in an oddly sympathetic sort of way. This poor guy didn't fit anywhere, but he seemed content to quietly try to squeeze in anyway without asking for accommodation from anyone. The response it pulled out of me kept veering back and forth between awkwardly endearing and just outright obscene, and I knew which one was about to win. But he was still staring at me, waiting for further exposition while he slowly stroked up and down my arm with one of those talented fingers. "That's what it means, hermano means brother. I guess you don't have a lot of Puerto Ricans come through here huh? And I haven't seen very many Blacks around here either, now that I think about it."

He really looked confused now.

"No, I guess not." The confusion melted into a sort of blissful daydreamy expression of soft longing. "I've never been with a black woman. I would love to though, they're so pretty."

I stared at him, but he just stared right back without anything in his face to imply he was teasing. "Are you serious?"

"About what?"

"You're not. You are? Look babe I know you're oblivious to a lot of what goes on around you and I admire your dedication to upholding and perpetuating the whole addled white boy stereotype but - are you seriously telling me you haven't noticed I'm not Caucasian?"

The blank look didn't budge, but there may have been just the slightest touch of surprise in the slightly raised eyebrows. "You're not?"

"No Andy, I'm not." I made a sweeping gesture down the length of my body, which was met with more of that empty stare. "Oh my god. You _are_ serious. Cutiepie, I'm Black. Half Black and half Puerto Rican, if you want to be exact."

"You are?"

"Yes Andy, I am." I would have started laughing if the whole thing wasn't so ludicrous. Color blindness was one thing, but Andy barely seemed aware of his own existence half the time. "What did you think I was?"

"I dunno...tan?"

"Oh my god. _Are you serious??"_ I knew I was asking that a lot - every other breath, it seemed - but I couldn't really think of anything else to say, and his face was just as innocent and guileless as I'd ever seen it. He wasn't messing with me. He really had no clue, and if I claimed that wasn't making me fifteen levels of horny I'd be lying through my teeth.

I wanted to tear this boy apart and devour what was left.

God, what the hell was this place doing to me.

"Yeah, I mean...you're from Los Angeles, right? Sunny California?"

If he'd been anyone else I would have decked him - but he was Andy, and that covered a multitude of sins, including this one. "Oh my god you're actually serious. What is Cree then?"

He shrugged. "Tan."

"He's _Chippewa._ What is Kevin?"

He was looking more confused by the second, bless his addled soul. "Tan?"

"He's Southeast Asian, Andy. I'm guessing Filipino."

"Oh." He looked embarrassed, but not because of his failure to notice the varying ethnicities of his co-workers so much as the fact that I was calling him out on something that he obviously put absolutely no importance on. "People are people, I don't notice much else. Does it matter?"

"No, it doesn't matter. It's just a little bit...weird. And oddly attractive." I leaned over him and pressed my nose against his, grinding my hips down on him. "You're too goofy to be anything but harmless, aren't you?" I teased him with a little bump against his semi-sleepy cock, feeling myself getting warmly wet to accommodate the fact that he was getting hard.

"I do get laid a lot."

"Mmm, yeah I think I understand that now." 

"So where you from then?" He shifted a bit, tilting his hips up to let me feel how stiff he was. I groaned miserably, ready to end this conversation and get him inside me as quick as I could.

"Los Angeles."

"No, I mean - you know what I mean."

"Ugh, Andy stop talking. Can't you see I'm trying to get some here?" He was staring up at me expectantly, his big deepset green eyes all inquisitive and irresistible, seemingly immune to the little bump and grind I was doing on his stomach. "Okay, alright...Dominican Republic, actually. On my father's side - my mother was Hispanic and my dad was Black."

"Was?"

"Yeah."

Something went sad in his eyes, a little downward glance that seemed more about hiding something than breaking contact with me. And then he reached up and wrapped those long arms around my shoulders to pull me down and snuggle closer, pushing his face into my neck. "Yeah. My mom and dad are _was_ too."

I couldn't rush him now, not after that. He went quiet and just lay there and so did I, and after a minute of just listening to him breathe I scooted over off his chest to lay next to him. He was a bit too bony for comfort for long term laying-on, but oddly enough that was his advantage where my libido was concerned. Tall and skinny and dark haired had always sort of been my default preference - Hawk fit the description, my ex husband squeezed into it fairly efficiently, even my high school boyfriend - a chain smoking emo named Colton who taught me how to shotgun Jagermeister and dye my hair Sonic blue - was a perfect poster boy for lanky dark stoner.

Not-Officer Burns hit all my buttons just right.

Which was why the whole Chief thing was twisting my brain and knotting my panties. He shouldn't have even been _in_ my brain, much _less_ in my panties, but there he was, flashing that hot blue stare at me and not fitting my usual standard for sexual attraction in the least. He was definitely tall - everyone in this town seemed to be - but he wasn't skinny, and he definitely didn't have dark hair. Everything about him was sort of...bright. Sunshiney. Golden.

Not my preference, though something in me had about decided it would do in a pinch.

And I'd been feeling a bit pinched ever since the first time he'd waved me into his office.

Andy stretched out beside me and slipped a hand between my thighs to bring my head back to his bed, teasing down my neck and shoulder with his mouth while those long glorious fingers nudged up into my soft bits and started coaxing little whimpers of pleasure out of my throat. Just what I'd wanted, finally.

It felt so goddamn good, all of it. And when he'd slowly brought me right up to the pinnacle till I couldn't breathe without tumbling over it, he moved his hand away and _Shhhhh'ed_ me gently when I fussed about it.

Not seven seconds later his mouth had replaced his fingers.

This was obviously something he enjoyed the hell out of, because nobody - _nobody_ \- had ever gone down on me with as much eager enthusiasm as he did. I don't just mean he slurped and licked with gusto and patience, I'm saying the boy went to fucking _town_ on me. Every lick was purposeful and each suck landed home with the wildly focused intention of making me come right the hell unglued.

Which is pretty much what I did. The more I squirmed and pulled his hair the more focused he got on his goal, and by the time I screamed something unintelligible and yanked the fitted sheet right off the top half of the mattress, he had his long arms looped tightly around my lower back and my hips arched up to his head, letting Chief and his golden-boy everything just sort of slip away on one of those neverending waves of bed-rocking wall-banging delight.

It was a climax for the ages, and I'll be far into the dark reaches of old age dementia with my Uncle Marvin before I ever forget it.

I'm not sure at what point he finally scooted up from between my thighs and settled on top of me, but he laid his head down next to mine and just breathed against my neck for a few minutes while I reacclimated to life on earth.

Goddamn. I couldn't fall in love with this boy - he was too young, too boyish, too free spirited, too _not for me_ as far as being a responsible adult human. But I sure as hell could fall hard in like with him, and I was way too far gone down that road already to even think about backing up.

No lover had ever treated me like this. He was gentle and considerate and playful and fun...all the things that made sex a great tension reliever, and that was what I needed.

Well...I needed that and to get laid on the regular, because something about all the snow and ice and grey skies and relentless neverending cold seemed to be making me horny as hell.

Huh.

That would have been something for further analysis if I'd had a functioning brain cell left in my head after that coccyx rattling orgasm. He pulled his head up and looked at me while I tried to thread my fingers through his wildly curly hair, tugging and pulling on the wavy tendrils around his face.

"Are you done?"

"Yeah, I'm done. Whew." I couldn't think of anything else to do and wouldn't have had the strength to do much of anything anyway, so I patted him on the head like the good boy he was. What I really wanted to do was kiss his forehead or something equally tender, but I wasn't sure Andy and I were that sort of lovers. Putting our mouths on each other's boy and girl parts was one thing, putting our lips on each other's faces was something else entirely.

Did friends kiss like that?

"Can I finish now?"

"Hmm?" He was looking down at me, slightly out of breath with that sleepy-eyed look men sometimes get when they're just about done. "Sure baby, go ahead. I'm just gonna - "

Before I could finish my sentence he pushed into me with a groan, and as he was settling between my legs to find a comfortable position I smoothed his hair back from his face and stroked behind his ears. I'd expected him to take care of himself against my hip or with a few quick tugs under the blanket, maybe ask me to suck him off, but he was sinking into me slow and gentle and I swear to god, I felt that warm fuzzy thing in my stomach start to flame up again.

This was new.

"Andy...geezus..."

He shifted on top of me so that his weight was on his forearms to either side of my head, pushing up and stroking against me just right, _so fucking right,_ and when that rising agony hit just the right pitch I felt him press one hand gently over my mouth.

I hadn't realized I was screaming his name.

"I've never come twice in one night before."

He poked his head out from behind the bathroom door, foaming at the mouth with toothpaste. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I've always been a once-and-done kinda girl. I usually fall asleep right after, I'm worse than a guy about cooze and snooze."

I heard him laugh and then spit, and after a few seconds the bathroom light went out and I could hear the floorboards creaking as he crossed the room in the dark. He laid down on the bed next to me and pushed his hand under mine.

"You need somebody better than whoever you've had."

I thought about Hawk. Not my greatest achievement in life, hooking up with him - but not my lowest moment either. I'd never felt like we really suited each other, but our relationship had served us both relatively well and it had been satisfying in its own power-trip kind of way. Right up until the moment he'd told me to suck it up and take my punishment for something he'd tried up to that point to convince me wasn't my fault.

That still confused me.

But Andy was breathing softly against my shoulder, his long wavy hair tickling the bend of my elbow as he pulled my arm up to shift it under his neck, scooting down on the bed so that he could curl that insanely long body up against me. For as big as he was, he sure did seem to like being the little spoon.

I wasn't much of a cuddler, but god help me he was going to turn me into one if I wasn't careful. 

_To be continued..._


	18. Business As Usual

"You gotta go back to your own place one of these days, Greta."

I snaked my arms around his middle and tucked into his back. For a skinny guy Andy was surprisingly cuddly - and even more surprising, I was starting to like that about him. He was doing the cooking this time, standing at that crazy old flametop stove with his thick nerdy glasses perched on his nose, looking every bit like some liberal arts professor and feeding into all sorts of kinks I'd never realized I had.

Pancakes. I'd had more breakfasts in his kitchen in my first week in Westupidbutwefuckgood than I'd eaten in my entire life.

"Why, am I crowding you?"

"Well...yeah. I mean, I like my personal space. I'm a bachelor, I'm not meant to have a woman living with me. I have anxiety." The look on his face as he stood there in his baggy pajamas with a spatula in one hand and a plate in the other was so comically distraught that I laughed out loud, not even the slightest bit offended by his proclamation. He was right and I knew I needed to suck it up and go home sooner or later - if for nothing other than to get some clean undies, because I'd been going without for a couple of days now and the crotch seam in my jeans was rubbing me raw.

Or maybe that was all Andy. I gave him a playful swat on the hiney that might have been a bit more suggestive if he hadn't looked like sex was just about the last thing on his mind.

"You make me laugh, cutiepie. I don't think you even mean to, do you."

He frowned at me, a confused hitch to the side of his mouth. "I've never thought I was particularly funny, but people are always laughing at me so I dunno, maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe it's this." He pointed to his face. That cute, beardy, sweet but slightly odd face that had spent so much time between my legs the previous night.

I was getting really attached to that face.

"Naw, you're adorable. Sexy eyes." I reached out to pat his cheek and he looked away with an embarrassed little grin as I flopped down in one of his two old wooden dining room chairs. It creaked threateningly and swayed slightly under my weight. "Are you hypoglycemic?"

He shook his head. "Naw. I just tell them that so they won't drink my Cokes and eat my cookies."

"I knew it. You're a wily one, Burns."

"You have to be around here."

"I bet you're not a blackout drinker either, are you."

"Shhhhhh." He raised a long finger to his lips and gave me a conspiratorial wink. "Nobody asks you stuff if they think you don't remember shit. Also less embarrassing for the other party if there was weirdness involved." He shuffled to the far side of the table and sat down with a creak and a sway in the other rickety chair. "And there's _always_ weirdness involved."

True that. I was feeling a little bit cringey myself with the realization that he likely knew far more than I did about our first encounter and all of its apparent bondage related perversion, but I was on a roll now. "And I'd lay money on you not being anywhere near as dumb as you come across, am I right?"

His eyes narrowed and his brows went up, hand halting midway to his mouth with a forkful of pancake. "Huh?"

Oops.

"Never mind, it's not important."

My text notification dinged from the bedroom and I ran to check it, relieved for the perfect timing of the intrusion, knowing he would have completely forgotten what I'd said by the time I got back. I didn't recognize the name on my phone and sat there blinking in confusion at a cryptic message from someone tagged as T Davis.

T Davis?

The message was just two words. _It's on._

A shiver jolted up my spine. Joe used to say that to me when we were about to start a pursuit. I stared at the screen for a long time, sort of lost in a momentary delirium of unwelcome memory, before I finally realized who T Davis was.

T Davis. Tommy Davis. My boss, the guy whose face _might_ have edged its way into my head the previous night at the same time I was slamming Andy's into the headboard. I went to contacts and added him, changing the name from T Davis to Chief, because Tommy was never going to feel right to me.

Solid evidence that I had an authority kink I would probably deny to the death but that my track record did nothing to disprove.

_What's on?_

_..._

_..._

_Your heat._

Oh. Yeah, that. I was a little bit mortified that he'd gone to my house this early in the morning to discover that I was obviously somewhere else, but where I slept was none of his business - and the fact that I felt cringey about it just irritated me that much worse. I typed out a single word response, spelling it out loud as I typed in a voice so angry that it sort of surprised me.

_Thanks._

And then I waited a second, doing my damndest to fight off the arbitrary little nudge to do something shitty that was banging around in my skull, but in the end I allowed it to convince me.

_Andy says he'll be a little late this morning._

Andy had said no such thing. Several long tics passed and I looked around the room, waiting, hoping he would reply but doubting he would, when I noticed I'd knocked the little baby quilt off the end of the bed when I'd flopped down on it. I picked it up and folded it neatly. I had no idea if it meant something to Andy, but leaving it on the floor felt wrong in some intensely disconcerting way.

And then my phone dinged.

_You didn't kill my gopher did you?_

There went that arbitrary little nudge again, but this time it was his own damn fault.

_He might be a little bit brain damaged._

_..._

_..._

_Business as usual then. And remind him to bring my damn coffee this time._

A rusty old Land Rover was parked at the end of my drive when I pulled up to my house. It took just one quick glance at the big round red face reflected in the side mirror to pull a groan out of me so loud it probably sounded to my neighbors like someone was dying in my yard.

It was Red Hanrahan, and he opened his door and stepped out, unfolding his big heavy self until he was standing there with a hugely irritated little fake smile on his face that registered as something more like a feral grimace than a friendly greeting. And then he gave me a _just a second_ hand signal and ducked his head back into the front seat of the car, reemerging a second later with an even more irritated look mixed with more than a touch of embarrassment.

And a bouquet of roses.

"Okay what in the _hell_ are you doing here?"

"I'm apologizing. For the - " He drew back with the roses and swung them like he'd swung the antenna from Unit Two, spraying red petals everywhere. "I have a temper."

"Yes you do, and if those are for me I don't want them. I'm on my way to work, shoo."

He looked distinctly taken aback. "Coffee?"

"No thanks, I can get my own. Chief made you do this, didn't he?" He took a step toward me and I shoved my hand out in a halt gesture. "Do _not_ come into my yard. And fix your damn fence, I'm not chasing your goats around anymore. I'm a police officer, not a zookeeper." He didn't move, just stood there staring at me with that annoyed grimace on his face, and I wondered if we had some kind of language barrier happening. "Can you understand me? I don't speak Asgardian or whatever, sorry." I went to move past him and he took another step forward. "Whoa, stop right there Odin, don't you come near me."

He held his hands out to his sides in a gesture vaguely reminiscent of surrender, still slinging those damn roses around. The red petals flying off them looked like big drops of blood splashed across the snow.

"There's a...show...at the cinema. Friday. You can go with me. We'll eat."

"No thank you, I'm not into dating men who rip up cars to smack me around. Tell your chief of police to mind his own damn business and _get off my lawn!"_

He threw that _wait_ finger up at me again and ducked back into his car, reemerging with yet something else in his hand that he held out to me, pushing it toward me, urging me to take it. I didn't trust him any further than I could sling his Land Rover so I just eyed it suspiciously from the safe distance of the curb. The thing he was holding was about the size of a half a loaf of bread, wrapped in oily brown paper.

"I don't want that."

"Take it. Is butter. I make it."

This was officially the first time I'd ever been offered butter as either a peace offering or a token of affection, and I had no clue how to respond to it. This goddamn town was so off center from anything even remotely resembling reality that I was starting to lose my ability to be surprised by the weirdness. It was a strange feeling. And Red was still standing there with his peace offering in his hand, staring at me with such sour begrudging patience all over his big red Santa face that I would have done just about anything to move this uncomfortable standoff along.

"Fine, just leave it by the door and go away."

He sort of smiled, or a roundabout version of it, and headed for my porch before spinning back around again, slinging rose petals all over the stark white snow. My yard was starting to look like a murder scene. "Cinema?"

 _"No._ No cinema."

He shrugged, then stopped and turned to me again. "No coffee?"

"No coffee! _Shoo!"_

He made a little "Eh" sound and trudged off to deposit his now mostly petal-less roses and chunk of butter the size of my head on the steps in front of my door. I watched from the curb, annoyed as piss and anxious to get into my house for the first time in three days, and by the time he finally drove off I was considering just skipping the extra step and going on to work as-is. But I could smell Andy all over me, and the promise of the heat being on and the resultant prospect of a toasty warm bathroom and clean underwear were just too alluring to pass up.

The roses and butter were a different story though, and I kicked them off the porch into the bushes on my way in.

Chief looked up and raised an eyebrow as I stomped into the station at five minutes to eight, standing there in the doorway with my half cold coffee and my fresh clean clothes and what I'm sure looked like the unpleasant place where disgust and confusion meet and start kicking each other in the nuts plastered all over my face.

_"Red Hanrahan is courting me."_

You wouldn't think it was physically possible for an eyebrow to go that high, but everything around this place seemed to pride itself on defying the rules, eyebrows included. "Excuse me he's what?"

" _Courting_ me. He brought me _flowers_. And...butter. I think it's from the bison."

"Llamas."

I didn't even glance over my shoulder to acknowledge the now familiar voice of perpetual correction. "Whatever Kevin."

Cade started laughing like a lunatic, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Chief leaned against his doorway and crossed his arms over his chest, obviously trying really hard to keep the delighted smile twitching at the corners of his mouth from going full blown. "Well, this is an unexpected plot twist."

"It's not a plot twist, it's a damn nuisance. He came to my _house._ He followed me to the coffee shop. I think he tailed me all the way here, hell he might be sitting outside right now with his goddamn roses and elk cheese."

Kevin opened his mouth but I threw a finger up to silence him. I could tell Chief was getting ready to bust and I turned on him with a vicious vengeance. "This is your doing, isn't it? You're so desperate to keep from having to do the paperwork on an assault charge that you talked him into making nice with me. _Didn't you."_

"I may have mentioned to him that battery is a prosecutable offense."

"And?"

"And that you were feeling a bit...prosecuty."

"Thanks. Thanks for that. Now I've got this gigantic old viking chasing me around wanting to take me to the goddamn movies."

There were a brief few moments of silence peppered with barely contained giggles from Cade's side of the room. I was internally daring anyone to speak and sorting the consequences in my head when the logging truck perched on the corner of Sarah's desk opened his damn mouth, just like I knew he would.

"The Back to The Future trilogy is showing."

"Shut up Creeley, you don't get to speak to me!"

He shrugged his giant shoulders and threw a pencil at Cade. "Just sayin'. That's like six hours you could spend with the old fart, holdin' hands, not havin' a clue what each other is sayin'. Bison butter's real good on popcorn."

"Llama butter."

We both glared at Kevin.

"Who knows, you might end up fallin' in love," he continued, like I wasn't about to grab Chief by the throat and demand he unlock the guns. "Red's got money, do the trophy wife thing for a few years till he kicks the bucket, then sell the llamas and move to the Bahamas. Or keep 'em, I mean...butter makes good lube."

I knew I shouldn't look at him. I knew with all my heart that I would regret it. But I did, and I was right. He was grinning at nobody in particular, hands gripping an imaginary assault victim, slowly pumping his hips against nothing.

"You're too disgusting for adjectives Creeley."

"You shouldn't use butter as lube, it's hard to get out of the sheets. Leaves oil in the washing machine," Kevin droned in that oddly discomfiting monotone of his. "It stains silk. You'd be better off using canola oil."

Cade chucked the pencil back at Creeley and stopped giggling long enough to join the discussion. "Naw naw naw, not canola, that shit turns carcinogenic at high temps."

"Who you fuckin' hard enough to generate that kinda heat?" Cree grabbed all the pencils out of Sarah's cup and threw them, scattering Ticonderoga Number Two's against the wall behind Cade's desk when he ducked. "Not Melinda I know that for sure."

"Hey you don't talk about Melinda, jackass."

"Why talk when I can do this - "

I didn't look. There was nothing on God's green earth that could make me look. I stared at Chief, and in the middle of all the pointless mayhem he crooked a finger at me, and I followed without hesitation. I've never in my entire career in law enforcement been so relieved to be summoned into a superior officer's office, and it didn't even have all that much to do with being alone with the man that kept appearing in my head every time I closed my eyes.

It didn't have anything to do with that. At all. Nope.

We assumed our usual positions as the door clicked shut behind us, Chief dropping his big body into that squeaky leather chair with a heart-rending sigh, me standing in front of his desk with my hands clasped behind my back. It was a power stance, designed to give the superior officer a sense of being in charge without putting the inferior into a submissive position. An acknowledgement that he was my boss, but that was as far as his dominance over me extended.

I didn't know why it felt so important to me to establish and cement that dynamic between us. I also didn't know why I opened my mouth and started talking before Chief got the chance to get settled, but as usual, I did just that.

"Thanks for fixing my heater."

He shot me a sideways glance while he was fiddling with a crooked drawer on his desk. "There was nothing wrong with it."

"Well thank you for turning it on then, whatever." He straightened his back with a wince and something in me, a deep dark twinge of sympathy, poked at me so hard I had to concentrate on staying where I stood. But apparently my brain couldn't multitask enough in Chief's presence to do that and keep my mouth from engaging, and once again we were off to the races without waiting for the starting gun. "Andy kicked me out, I'm going to be unpacking boxes at my place tonight. You want to...come over for a drink? Or...two?"

He looked genuinely surprised, though I couldn't tell if it was because Andy had given me the boot or because I'd invited him to get drunk with me. "You need some help moving stuff?"

"No, I'm not asking for your back - which I think is one incorrectly lifted piece of furniture away from needing a brace, to be honest. I'm asking for your company."

The raised eyebrow of suspicion told me all I needed to know. This man didn't trust me any further than he could hurl me away from him. Which was probably pretty smart on his part, but I had nothing more than noble intentions behind my invitation.

Noble, and maybe just a _little_ bit suspect.

"I want you to take Andy and Cree to Ted's, Cree's got some stuff to take over there. And make sure Andy brings my coffee back this time."

"I'm the designated driver now?"

Frustration furrowed his brow, a look I'd seen on that handsome face of his more than any other expression since the day I'd arrived. "Look, I know what your specialty was back in LA. We don't really have any call for an officer with your skills out here, I'm sure you've noticed. But I know you like driving, so...drive." He made a shoo motion toward the door.

"I guess that's a no on the invite then huh."

He didn't look at me for a long time, chewing on his lip like he was deep in thought. I turned around to leave; if it required that much mental energy to decide whether or not he wanted to come over for a drink after work then I didn't want him to accept out of sympathy or some misplaced sense of politeness. He could pass me right on by with that noise.

"So Cree and Andy to Ted's, then I'm guessing it's back here to watch Kevin turn invisible every time someone looks at him. Oh and avoiding my new stalker because frankly he freaks me the fuck out, and hockey out back during lunch hour because you don't like to mingle with other humans. There's my day's agenda mapped out." I gave him a thumbs-up on my way to the door. "Sounds like it's gonna be a good one."

I had my hand on the knob when he stopped me.

"I'd like to come over. A drink sounds good."

"Yeah?"

He nodded. "Yeah." And then he smiled, though it was an uncomfortable little grimacey type smile that all but screamed _What the fuck did I just do_. "And make sure Andy wears that kevlar vest or you're both on llama duty shoveling shit at Red's for the rest of the week, you hear me?"

Part of me wanted to mouth off back to him. Part of me wanted to flip him off. And part of me wanted to just do what he said, because those hot blue eyes of his were looking all kinds of soft and warm while they stared at me from under those stupidly expressive eyebrows. The rest of his face was caught somewhere between discomfort and amusement, and I'd be damned if bemused uncertainty wasn't a good look on him.

"I hear ya Chief."

_To be continued..._


	19. The Sins of Someone's Else's Past

"Caramel frappuccino with extra vanilla and whipped cream please. Three inches high." Andy eyed the bowl of sprinkles on the prep table behind the counter. "Can you put some of those on top too?"

Ted turned around and looked at the table, shaking his head. The indulgent smile when he turned back to us made it clear that putting together Andy's blood glucose murdering concoction was a high point of his morning so far. "So the usual huh? You want me to just drop a whole bag of confectioner's sugar in it while I'm at it?"

"Yeah sure, sounds good."

Ted slung his towel over his shoulder and pointed to me. "Like my life depends on it, right?"

"Or black with a splash, whichever is in reach." He winked and moved over to the coffee machine to start making our order, and as I headed for a table by the front window I was stopped by Cree kicking a chair out in front of me. He nodded his head toward it.

"Have a seat, Great One."

"No thanks, I'd rather sit where I can see literally anything other than your face."

"Ooh, ouch." He watched me sit down at the next table over, carefully ignoring him but goddamn if being stared at by him wasn't exactly like having one of those dragon-sized desert hawks eyeing you from a chunk of roadkill. I sat back and leveled a return stare back at him. After a few long seconds of this he finally sat back too, only breaking his stare long enough to glance at Andy as he handed me a steaming cup and settled into the chair across from him to complete our uncomfortable little triangle. "You're not a team player, you know it Morley? That's your problem."

I took a sip of my coffee and very slowly put it down on the table.

"This coming from the guy who slammed his own teammate into the wall and nearly crippled him over a family dispute."

Cree's eyes went dark. He lowered his head and leaned across the empty space between our tables to put his face close to mine, so close I could feel his breath move my hair, and jabbed a thick finger at me. _"Killed. Her. Partner."_

Oh. Ouch...

The atmosphere in the shop suddenly took on that cold chill of high noon in the agonizing final few seconds before the town clock starts chiming and bullets start flying. I knew I had not a snowflake's shot at survival in Satan's underwear as far as coming out on top of any scuffle with this lawless giant, but my hands were shaking and I could hear Joe in my head, goading me to floorboard it. Cree looked like he was having a similar internal struggle at controlling himself. And then Andy took a swig of his frappuccino and sat back shaking his head at us, breaking the stress of the moment. "Come on guys, there's only one person in here who ever killed somebody on purpose and it's not either of you."

The change in Cree's face and demeanor was so sudden that it shocked me. He dragged his eyes away from me slowly, but there was something in his expression when he turned to look at Andy that I couldn't begin to interpret; if I had to put a name to it I would be hard pressed to call it anything other than apprehension and dismay mixed with a healthy dose of fear. And then he grabbed the cup out of Andy's hand and slugged back a huge swallow that left whipped cream and caramel drizzle in his messy beard.

"Shut up kid."

And that was that, end of discussion, two big guys sitting quietly drinking their drinks while I looked back and forth trying to downshift my emotional response while puzzling out what just happened and who the hell had killed someone. The only other person in the bakery was Ted, behind the counter in a green apron, humming quietly to himself while he dumped heart shaped sprinkles over a fresh batch of chocolate glazed donuts.

"Him??"

Andy didn't look at me, but Cree gave me a hard stare that lasted long enough to make me shift uncomfortably in my chair. And then he abruptly stood up and dropped a five on the table before bending over and shoving a big finger in Andy's face. "Don't you say another word to her."

The whole thing was freakishly unsettling. Cree wasn't acting right - nobody was, to be honest - but the way he was looking at Andy was so disturbing and confusing that I just sat there staring at the two of them. They knew something I didn't, obviously. Andy's words weren't exactly cryptic but he hadn't elaborated either, and Cree seemed to know who the unnamed killer was. The fact that it shut him up that fast was something I felt like I should probably be just a little bit nervous about.

I looked around the shop. An elderly couple had come in and were settling by the front window with their dainty cups of black coffee, but other than them there was no one except Ted the ex cop and us. He seemed a likely candidate if for no other reason but process of elimination, but before I could get up to take myself a well meaning stroll over to the counter to start being nosey, there was an almighty crash from behind me.

"What the - "

I thought someone had knocked over a table by accident, but by the time I spun around Cree was giving Andy a hard shove into the newspaper stand by the door. I jumped up, my kneejerk response to sudden mayhem being to grab the nearest liftable item that could be used as a weapon and start wielding it with intent. Nothing was in reach except a porcelain cow filled with half-n-half, but I grabbed it anyway. "Hey, what the hell Creeley - "

But Andy didn't need me intervening on his behalf. He righted himself and came back at Cree hard enough to knock him through the door, which thankfully swung open with the impetus of his weight hitting it. I looked over at Ted to see if he was going to say anything.

He just shook his head a little, rolling his eyes like he'd seen this far too many times to waste his words on it.

"Don't worry about it," he said to me, turning his attention back to the tray of donuts he was decorating. "One of these days Andy's gonna crack Cree's skull open and a bunch of moths are gonna fly out."

"But - "

He saw what was in my hand and immediately pointed to it. "Hey, no using my udder buddies as weapons. Down. Put her down."

I set the cow on the counter and stood there for a second trying to decide if I wanted to get involved or just watch. I also needed to figure out if I wanted to make myself responsible for Chief's coffee or not - Andy had walked off and left it sitting on the counter, and the eternal struggle of making a decision between being nice and keeping him out of trouble and simply watching the drama go down and then letting him deal with Chief himself had me in its thrilling grip.

That was when I realized I was pretty much alone with Ted now. I forgot about the coffee and took my shot.

"Hey, have you ever killed anybody?"

Ted stopped waving the dust from an exploded bag of powdered sugar out of the little mushroom cloud in front of his face and started to say something, but his eyes went past me with enough sudden interest to make me turn around and look. Creeley was standing out on the sidewalk in front of the shop laughing while Andy shoved the door open and strolled out, not resisting when Cree grabbed him by the neck and pulled him close. I could see the big thug shaking a finger in his face, and through the heavy glass door I could hear the muffled carry of what he was saying.

_You talk too damn much._

I remembered what Chief had said when he was warning me not to ask questions - _Don't ask, I'm not going to tell you. And don't ask Andy either, he's not allowed to talk._

People around here sure did seem to have a vested interest in keeping that Irishman from opening his mouth.

Andy broke loose of Cree's grip and turned around to look in at me, then turned back to Creeley and gave him a long hard glare. And then he got in the car while the gigantic lout stood there staring through the door at me, the unsettling dangerous grin of a predator who knows he has the high ground settled firmly on his face.

I didn't know what any of it was about, but I knew I needed to get Andy into bed again soon, for two reasons. One, seeing him knock Creeley's gigantic ass right out of the donut shop was one of the most erotically arousing things I'd seen in god knows how long, possibly ever. And two, I wasn't above using that moment of baldfaced honesty that comes right after a guy shoots his load to squeeze in a couple of quick and directly phrased questions that he would be too emptyheaded to evade. But it was going to have to wait, because I had a day of stupidity lined up ahead of me and an ill-advised drinks date with Chief after, and there was no way in hell I was going to miss that.

There was either some bad blood between Andy and Creeley, or Creeley was doing the growling-dog protective stance over a secret that Andy could spill. And I already knew how bad he was with secrets...he'd lasted all of half a day before spewing our drunken bedbreaker escapade to a room full of coworkers. It wouldn't take much.

And I knew what he liked.

I nodded to Ted and strolled out, leaving Chief's coffee sitting on the counter.

Not my job, not my problem.

We weren't back inside the station for more than an hour, going about our jobs and twiddling our thumbs over the lack of crimes being committed before whatever was simmering between Andy and Creeley boiled up and started to spew out of the pan. I'd gone into the break room to see if Andy had any Cokes stashed and found Cree sitting at the single table writing out what looked like a calendar schedule, and before I could even turn around to walk out he spotted me. And ever true to his god given tendencies, he said something.

I didn't even really hear what it was, but Andy did. He was in the hallway trying to get past Hobo to go to the supply room but immediately turned around and pushed past me, heading into the break room with a scowl that had all kinds of _oh god oh no oh shit_ scribbled across it. I didn't know what an angry Andy looked like, but I would bet the last Coke in the fridge I was looking at it right then. It wasn't scary by any means - Andy's face was just about the sweetest nonthreatening thing I'd ever seen in my life - but if I had to name it I'd say the best word to describe it would just be _ominous_. Mainly because it was such an unexpected thing to see...but there it was, on its way toward the biggest meanest human being in the station without any indication at all of fear for its own safety.

Hobo was still barking so I couldn't hear what was said, but I saw Cree look past Andy at me right before he shook his head and rubbed a big hand down his face with a sigh. Chief had come out of his office and was standing in his doorway, watching us through the glass wall that separated the hallway and break room from the main work area. It was likely the dog's ungodly racket that had brought him out, but the second he saw Andy charge into the break room he settled in to watch - he didn't look like he had any intention of interfering, but he definitely had the air of a man stationing himself in a position of oversight in case things got out of hand. Kevin wandered in and stood behind me, and Saint stacked up behind him so that the hallway was filled with big male bodies anxious to see whatever was about to go down.

Big male bodies and _me_ , fighting an internal struggle between my desire to get the hell out of the way and my insane need to see bloodshed. But I couldn't have bailed if I'd wanted to, because between the pair of them Kevin and Saint had the escape route blocked. Hobo was at the other end of the corridor losing his shit like we were all trying to invade his personal space, so yeah, I was staying put where I stood - and that meant I had a front row seat for the fireworks that were undeniably coming.

And come they did.

All hell broke loose, complete with snarling hellhound for the background soundtrack. There was a second of of stillness before the storm set in and then Cree stood up and hurled Andy against the wall. Just straight up _threw_ him like he weighed nothing. Andy hit the paneling so hard it caved against his weight, splintering around him, but he managed to keep to his feet and came back at Cree so fast that it took everyone by surprise - including Cree. The shout of pure anger that came from Andy's throat was chilling as he hit him, full body, and took him down in a tackle so messy and hard that they knocked the table over on their way down.

"Is somebody gonna - ?"

Kevin and Saint both winced, but neither of them made any move toward the melee. I pushed past them back into the hallway and made a _What the hell?_ gesture toward everyone that was still in the main room, but Cade and Sarah were busy passing a twenty back and forth and Chief just shook his head, leaning back against the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. "Let 'em go. Andy'll burn out in a minute and Cree will stop when he does."

"But - "

He looked at me, one eyebrow cocked. "You want to try to get between them? Be my guest."

He had a point there. And when I turned back around to see what was happening in the break room, I was greeted by the most beautiful thing I'd seen since my arrival in Wecantbebotheredtobenormalville.

Andy was on top of Creeley and was pummeling the shit out of him, fists flying, just one punch after another - but as astounding of a sight as that was, the truly bizarre part of the scenario was that Cree was just _laying there taking it,_ big arms out to his sides, doing nothing to stop any of it.

"I'm sick of you being a goddamn shitmouthed motherfucker to her you fucking bastard!! _Leave her alone!!"_

Andy was defending my honor, the stupid adorable angel. Gee-zus, if that wasn't something to see.

"You tell her you're sorry you asshole!! Stop talking to her stop looking at her _stop thinking about her!! I know you're thinking shite things about her so cut it the fuck out!!"_

Creeley started to laugh, laying there on his back with this skinny tall goof sitting on his stomach slamming his head into the floor by the neck of his shirt, and I swear to god the harder Andy hit him the harder he laughed. After several long noisy seconds of this he finally just nodded and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

"Okay kid, okay. You win. Get off me before I put you through the window."

It was sort of surprising how quickly Andy geared down and quit when he was told - he sort of hit a wall and slammed on the brakes, that angry look suddenly vanishing off his face and sweet old Shag and Bag Burns falling back into place. And just like that, just as fast as it had gone down in the donut shop, it was over. He stood up, holding his hand out to help Creeley up. Cree reached up and punched him in the side of the leg instead of taking it. "Dumbass."

"Ow, fuck. Dick."

I thought for a second one of two things would probably happen next - one of them would throw another punch and the whole thing would start over, or they would do that awkward dudebro sideways hug where guys slap each other's shoulders and then walk away without making eye contact, doing their damndest to hide whatever closeted homoerotic feels their little slapfest had dredged out of them. But Andy just walked out and Cree picked up his paper from the floor where it had landed during the scuffle, and that was that. Done. And I had no idea what it was about, because absolutely nothing in me believed for a second it actually had anything to do with me.

Cade yelled "Somebody shoot that damn dog!" from the front room as he tucked Sarah's twenty into the pocket of his plaid shirt and Kevin and Saint dispersed from the hallway to go back to whatever they were doing before the fun started, and I just stood there in the middle of it all, wondering what exactly had just transpired in front of me. Something was tucked firmly away under a very shallow surface around this place, that much was obvious.

A year suddenly didn't seem like such a harsh sentence, not if I was going to have simmering little small town mysteries like this to stick my nose into. I stepped out of the way as Hobo charged past me to get to the kibble Chief was pouring onto the floor in the holding cell. He turned around to go back into his office, but stopped like he'd remembered something and turned back to me again.

"So...we still doin' those drinks tonight?"

It was maybe twenty past noon when a call came in to break up the soul killing dullness of the still after the storm. Cree and Chief had left just before lunchtime after a discussion in Chief's office that was executed too quietly for me to overhear, no matter how close I parked myself near his door under the guise of chatting with Sarah, who just kept shaking her head like she knew what I was doing. Cade left in a hurry after a phone call, snatching his color coordinated plaid jacket and thermos off his desk and giving me a wink on his way out. Saint sort of just...vanished, taking Andy with him. And just as luck and the universal overlords would have it, all the desertions meant that Sarah and Kevin and I were the only ones left in the station when the call came in. Kevin didn't seem to be cleared for anything other than dispatch, which was odd because he was huge and scary looking and just sort of...standard lunkhead cop material, but his only job was apparently dispatch and watching over the station itself. And Sarah didn't seem very impressed with me.

Kevin came silently shuffling into the main lobby and stared at me until I looked at him.

"Yes?"

"Call just came in."

I waited, but he didn't say anything. I looked over at Sarah, but she was just sitting there doing her paperwork and not paying any attention to us. "Okay, so what's the call?"

"Horse. On the town square."

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"It's Cluskey Jorgensson's mare." He stood there looking at me like I should understand the importance of that fact. I didn't.

"Okay, so - ?"

"You have to go get her."

"Of course I do. Ya know, I know just about as much about horses as I do about llamas, which is _jack shit_ Kevin." He stood there, silent and still, unblinking and unnerving me to hell and back before I finally sighed and held my hand out. "Keys to Unit Three please."

"Unit Two. Unit Three has a ruptured radiator."

"Yeah yeah I know, some local drove whatever a snowcat is into it, probably a Norwegian. So give me the keys to Unit _Two_ before something really terrible happens to one of us, _Kevin."_

He was reaching into his shirt pocket to slowly and methodically pull out an assortment of jumbled keyrings when I realized he probably knew everybody in this place as well as anyone would. I glanced back over my shoulder at Sarah; she was still doing paperwork, or maybe she was doing a crossword, I couldn't really tell, but at least she wasn't paying me any mind. I leaned in as close to Kevin as I dared. "Hey, what's the story with Andy and Cree?"

"Same as the story between Cree and everybody else."

"Which is?"

"He's a bit of an asshole."

I couldn't dispute that, but there had to be more to it. "Yeah but Andy is a pacifist angel and I watched him jackhammer that caveman's face into the floor. You can't convince me that was normal for him."

He stared blankly at me for several long seconds before quietly saying, "Have you met Cree?"

"Okay true, yeah. But there's nothing on god's green earth that's going to convince me Not-Officer Burns is some Doctor Jekyll Mister Hulk type dual personality psycho capable of random acts of shocking violence."

Kevin looked past me, his face taking on the first evidence I'd ever seen that he wasn't made of chiseled stone. It was an actual expression, and it was...unidentifiable. I turned around to see what he was looking at and was met with the sight of Sarah giving him a chilly look over the top of her little glasses.

"Don't ever underestimate Andrew Burns," she said quietly. I opened my mouth to say something, but she put a hand up to silence me. "Just _don't._ And don't ever get between him and Cree if anything goes down, because Bobby Creeley will not hesitate to rip your head off to get to any threat aimed at that boy."

I didn't have the first clue what to say to all that - it was simultaneously more than I'd expected and not anywhere near as much as I wanted. But she didn't elaborate any further, and when I turned back around to look at Kevin he was shuffling quietly off down the hallway back to the dispatch closet. Hobo started barking from the bathroom as he passed and Sarah looked up at me again in mock surprise that I was still standing there.

I had so many questions...a half baked idea to take another shot at the female solidarity thing and ask her if she wanted to grab some lunch with me popped into my head, but once again she caught me just about to start talking and cut me off with that stern middle-school teacher stare of hers.

"Don't you have a horse to deal with?"

_To be continued..._


	20. I've Been Through Hell On A Horse With No Name

I didn't have any trouble locating the horse. The town square was literally just that - one small square, boxed in on all four sides by run down but brightly colored storefronts with patched awnings and hand-written signs out front, advertising free coffee to customers and half buried in the day's new allotment of snow. I parked and got out of the car, slipping and sliding on the slick sidewalk all the way down to the cafe where a big bay mare was eating what looked like plastic begonias from a broken wood slat pot hanging in front of the window.

This was every bit as out of my wheelhouse as the llama, but I figured it couldn't be much different in the execution. Four legs, an eye on each side of the head, and no doubt a nasty disposition peppered with a tendency to abscond - I'd already failed with one species, might as well make it a matched pair.

"Whoa there..." I started to reach out but stopped myself when the beast snapped its head up to side-eye me suspiciously. I didn't know if horses were biters but I wasn't in any heated hurry to find out the hard way. "Does that work? Am I supposed to say whoa there? Or is that a movie thing." I reached out again, more slowly this time, to touch the side of its nose in a gesture of what I thought would come across as harmless familiarity - and the damn thing rared its gigantic head back to snap a mouth full of huge freaky teeth at me, sending me backward in one of those kneejerk self preservation dances that never end well. I snatched my hand back and slipped, and in the next two seconds I was down in a graceless tumble onto my ass on the curb.

Humiliation was starting to be my closest friend. Humiliation and Andy...but Andy was nowhere to be found, so for now it was me and my pink cheeks for the win. I looked around while I dusted the snow off my pants and caught a glimpse of a familiar vehicle pulling in at the far side of the square, cringing that once again someone had probably seen the flopping-fish awkwardness that was starting to be my calling card. The big red-faced lout that clambered out of the Land Rover was unmistakably Norwegian, not that I'd known until yesterday what a Norwegian looked like. But I sure as hell knew what one looked like now.

Red Fucking Hanrahan.

I shoved my hand out toward him and he stopped where he stood, halfway across the street, holding his arms out to his sides in an _Aww come on_ gesture that matched the _look at me I'm harmless_ expression on his face - which was a baldfaced lie and he and I both knew it. At least his hands were empty this time, but that was no guarantee of anyone's safety. I guess my headshake was emphatic enough to get my point across because he waved his arms at me one more time and then shrugged like it really didn't matter to him one way or the other, and then he changed course and headed off toward the grocers on the corner, where a rusty sign was creaking ominously on chains that were probably forged sometime around the first dawn of the Dark Ages.

Nobody else was around, thank god. I turned my attention back to the horse and was trying to figure out what to do about it when movement caught the corner of my eye through the half frosted cafe window.

_Creeley._

Goddammit. _Goddammit._ And Chief too, I could see him inside the cafe sitting with his back to the window, eating while Cree sat across from him watching me, giggling his fool ass off.

WehateeveryonebutespeciallyyouGreta wasn't a lovely quiet little snow-covered midwestern town filled with colorful characters like the happy little houses and pink-cheeked citizens would have you believe on first glance. No, if it was anything it was that sticky yellow section of floor in front of a public toilet that you carefully straddle because you don't want it getting on the hems of your pants - but the lights are flickering and you can't see well enough to avoid it, and you _know_ you just stepped in it.

My hems were so wet there was nothing else to do but just set fire to my pants and go buy new ones.

To this day I couldn't say with any real certainty what set that damn horse off, but just as I was about to flip Creeley off through the window, the big brute - the horse, not Creeley - lost its absolute _shit_ and rared up on its back legs screeching some godawful version of a horse warning for me to back the fuck off. Which I did, but it rared up again and started pawing its front hooves at me, and in a moment of complete and utter blind stupidity I reached for the rope I saw dangling from around its neck.

In a secondary moment of even more complete and utter stupidity, I grabbed it and held on.

I've lived - sometimes just barely - through some fairly pants-pissing moments as an officer on the LAPD. I've had the unlucky misfortune to have drawn weapons with coked up drug dealers in the middle of interrupted transactions, the exhilarating luck of taking a blind curve against the guardrails at 120mph with two bullets in my radiator and a half deflated rear tire, and the stupid adrenaline rush of bluffing my way out of an escalation between what I will never stop believing was two minivans full of vampires while my drunk partner made lame werewolf jokes. I've seen some shit. But none of those things struck anywhere near the kind of cold gnawing fear in me that that angry dinosaur-sized animal kicking at my head did.

But I held onto that rope with everything I had, a stubborn determination to come out on top of _something_ driving me to dig in and not let go.

I was promptly yanked off my feet, which was pretty much what the little voice in the back of my head had mockingly told me was going to happen, and as I struggled to regain my balance I glanced back at the window. Creeley was howling with laughter, slapping his hand on the table hard enough to make Chief's coffee cup jump.

Of course he was.

But my boss was still sitting there with his back to the window, not bothering to turn around even though I felt sure he was being treated to a gleeful running commentary from his tablemate, seemingly disinterested in witnessing the proceedings for himself.

It was then that I knew that Tommy Davis, after a mere three days of limited acquaintance with my bumbling ass, was already just about done with me.

I fought that damn horse for a good ten minutes before the cafe door finally opened and Chief walked out, leisurely pulling his coat on. Cree stepped out behind him, still giggling. Chief handed him his coffee and then put one hand out and laid it on the horse's nose, and the insane beast instantly settled like he'd done some freaky Newt Scamander animal magic on it.

Just like that.

"Okay that's just - " I caught myself about to mutter _goddamn arousing_ but caught the words in time. "That's just not fair."

He pulled the rope out of my hands without looking at me and led the horse over to a post at the curb while I watched with a rising indignation. He made it look so easy. I'd struggled mightily just to stay on my feet as it tossed me around on the end of that rope like a damn rag doll, but now the stupid thing followed him without complaint. Chief looked up at me as he tied the rope around the post and I could see the amusement dancing madly in his eyes.

For some dumb reason I couldn't talk myself into being pissed about it. "You couldn't have come out here ten minutes ago and done that?"

"Nope."

"Why the hell not?!"

He crinkled one eye and stared at me like the answer was obvious and I just wasn't paying attention. "I was eating lunch."

He was having one off on me, I knew. I should be pissed as hell, I knew. I should tell him off and deal with the consequences, I knew. But I also knew the soft little grin on his stupid mouth was sucking all the ire right out of me just as sure as if it was planted between my legs and my anger was stored in my vagina.

God I hated that grin.

Creeley wandered off with a chuckle, his own particular brand of smirky little shitsmile plastered firmly all over his face. Which left me and Chief and that damn horse and a whole lot of awkward discomfort hanging between us like something everybody can smell but nobody wants to call out. I had cleared my throat and shuffled my feet like a penitent third grader before I even realized what I was doing.

"What was it?"

He knelt down to check the horse's foot and gave me a half distracted "Huh?" as he set it back down and stood up, brushing his hands off on his jeans.

"Your lunch, what was it?"

"Oh, uh - " He cast me a little sideways glance while he stroked the horse's snout. "Noodle soup."

"Ah." Still stroking. _Dear god make me stop thinking about him doing that to me._ I cleared my throat again, my cheeks warming up uncomfortably. So pathetic. "Was it good?"

"A bit on the salty side today."

Just like me. I'd never experienced solidarity with a bowl of soup before, it was an odd feeling.

"Apparently animals don't like me," I stammered a little too quickly, motioning toward the now calm horse as if there was any lack of clarity about which animal I was referring to - though to be honest, I was half expecting Elsie to stroll out from between the two buildings and spit at me, making this a happy little gathering of my recent ignominious defeats. Wehaveshitfences was quickly turning into a free-range asylum for escaped fourleggers that I'd failed to catch. "I never had this problem before, I don't know what's actually happening here."

"A lot of loose livestock around greater LA, huh?"

There it was again, that twinkling spark of amusement in those ridiculous hot blue eyes. Staring him down didn't work and I ended up looking away, off across the square where Red Hanrahan was sitting on a bench eating a sandwich with a foul look on his face. He threw on a quick fake smile and waved at me.

"Yeah, no. I mean, there's an occasional exotic pet that gets away from some rich eccentric dipshit with more money than sense, but that's not really my department."

He was watching me through squinted eyes, nodding in that polite way that people do when they're only listening to be nice. But something in his face strongly suggested that he was enjoying my discomfort way too much, and that got into my undies in all kinds of horrible ways. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and waved somewhere in my general vicinity as he put it to his ear. "You've got that 'not from around here' smell to you."

"Great."

It was something of a saving grace that Creeley wasn't around, because there is no amount of money I wouldn't have bet on him popping off about that smell actually being a mixture of failure and Irish co-worker. I glared across the street at Red. He hurriedly put on that frightening fake smile that was more of a condescending grimace than a display of friendliness - or maybe that was just how he smiled - and held his sandwich up like he was offering it to me. I turned my back to him.

"Okay, Jorgenssen's on a call." Chief tucked his phone away and patted the horse on the neck; it pushed its huge head against his shoulder in pretty much exactly the way I wanted to. "You go on back to the station, I'm going to run her home."

"How are you going to do th- "

My question was cut off by the stunning sight of Chief hitching his jeans up and reaching up to grab onto the horse's mane. I stood there in shock, watching with my mouth very likely wide open as he swung his leg up over its back and seated himself with a bit of a wince before digging something out of his pocket and looking down at me. "Here, give these to Cree." He tossed me the keys to his Jeep, made a clicking sound with his mouth, and I swear to god everything in me melted into the sensible white cotton crotch panel of my Hanes For Her as he tapped his heels into that horse's sides and headed off down the street like a fucking Texas Ranger taking a leisurely horseback stroll through his frontier town.

All I could do was stare after him, wondering where the universe was storing all this weirdness that it kept doling out in measured doses as if to prove that yes Greta, there are indeed a few things left in the world that you haven't seen yet.

This town, in its entirety, was a big chunk of them.

Chief was halfway down the block when he turned back and yelled "We still on for drinks tonight?"

I didn't even know what to say. I just nodded, and then I dropped his keys into the pot of half eaten plastic begonias and headed back to the station like the good little girl Chief Tommy Davis totally knew I wasn't.

At about five past seven I opened the door of my quaint and mostly empty little house with what probably translated as a nervous smile sitting uncomfortably on my face. I didn't even know what I was nervous about to be honest - I no longer felt any real need to prove anything to this man after three days of watching him stand back and allow his town and his station to wallop the shit out of me - but there it was, a quivery little gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach that pretty much choked off my air when I saw Chief standing on my porch with two bottles and a disarmingly uncomfortable little smile of his own. He held the bottles out to me.

Wine on the left, whiskey on the right, both of them shockingly good labels. I reached for the whiskey, which I'm sure told him all he needed to know about me.

"Nice, very nice - thank you."

He nodded, glancing though the open door behind me. And I just stood there stupidly, my eyes drawn to the open top two buttons of his softly faded blue chambray shirt. He never had more than one button open during work hours and a white teeshirt underneath his usual flannel kept all but his adam's apple hidden discreetly from sight...but now there was skin, and a healthy amount of it.

God. There was no reason in hell for me to be this ridiculously sex starved, not after all the hormone sharing and seratonin swapping I'd been doing with Andy...but something insidious about this place was amping my libido to eleven and it was like a felony hit and run of puberty circling around to hit me a second time - and then backing over me to take another run at my twitching corpse, because why not. And while all this was going on in my endocrine gland, Chief was looking at me with those goddamn hot blue eyes that he still had no human right to possess, that lovely little V-shaped indent that men have so prominently at the juncture of their clavicles hollowing and rising with his foggy breath and dragging my eyes to it. Before my head even had a chance to dance off down that highly disrecommended road, I shivered.

"Are we drinking out here? I mean, that's fine, but I can tell you this wine is better at room temperature." His smile went from hesitant to completely disarming in the space of just about two breaths, measured by his clavicle pit. "And I know room temp in there is a cozy sixty-eight degrees because I set it there myself." He pointed past me into the house and I cringed at the unspoken but silently acknowledged fact that he'd been in my house while I was bonking the resident Irishman just a few blocks away. I nodded and stepped awkwardly out of the way, clutching the bottle of whiskey and sort of wanting to die somewhere quiet and warm and devoid of those sparkly goddamn eyes as he moved past me into the place where I was rumored to live.

You couldn't prove it by the looks of it. Everything I'd brought with me was still in big sealed boxes, stacked randomly around the front room like a minimalist nightmare showroom. Chief took a deep breath and clapped his hands together.

"So which one are the glasses in?"

Straight to business, bless him. A man after my own heart, not that it was worth the effort.

Chief was standing in the middle of my livingroom, just sort of looking around from box to box, surveying the current status of my life and showing neither approval nor disapproval. Not that it was any of his business either way. He turned to look at me and raised one of the two glasses we'd dug out of the crate I was now sitting on.

"To new starts, however jerky they may have been."

I raised mine. "Does that mean I'm forgiven for my multitudinous transgressions of the past three days?"

He laughed a little, a confused crease wrinkling his forehead for a second before he nodded. "I think you're a good cop, Morley. I just think you're used to being indulged, for whatever reason." He stared at me hard and I knew he knew about me and Hawk - or at least had a strong and obviously accurate suspicion. But I also knew that I had earned every indulgence I'd been afforded, and the only bonus my relationship with the Captain had given me was a bit of an untouchable status in the department. But Chief obviously saw me as the spoiled and coddled favorite, not that I could truly blame him for that particular assumption. But still.

It made me feel a little bit prickly.

And since I'd already downed two shots of that damn good whiskey he'd brought, I opened my mouth and let 'er rip.

"I guess that means I won't be afforded the same indulgences here, since you don't actually seem to like me very much."

Huh - not actually what I'd intended to say. Something flinched in his cheek, and his eyes went to the floor somewhere to my left. I could tell he was weighing his next words carefully. All I wanted was for him to drop his guard, just once, for just a few seconds, but Tommy Davis wasn't that sort of man. The sort of man that he _was_ was written all over him.

Strong willed. Capable. Cautious. But not immune. He skulled the last of his whiskey back and held his glass out. "Give me another, Morley."

He was building up that immunity he was lacking in, and as I watched him down another shot I felt my own head getting a little warm. "So...Andy and Cree. Wow. Not gonna lie, that whole brawl thing got me a little sweaty."

He just looked at me, wincing a little from the bite of the booze and maybe a bit from the change in conversational direction. The locals weren't the only ones who could play that infuriating verbal whiplash game. "What's the deal between them? I mean, Andy's this great big _peace and love and weed_ type hippie dude and suddenly he's slinging fists with the station sasquatch over a playground insult?"

He swallowed the last of what he'd been holding in his mouth and hissed a little through his teeth, eyes closed tight. "What did I tell you about asking questions about Andy?"

"Yeah but - "

"He has an overdeveloped sense of justice, I guess. He seems to feel like Cree's being unfair to you."

"Well, I mean, he is - "

"And that's all I'm going to say about it." His look turned chilly for a second, then went shockingly blank. The mental calculations swirled around in my head; was that his third glass or fourth? I was on my third and my thoughts were starting to stray.

So were his, evidently.

"Why are you fucking Andy?"

Okay yeah, definitely his fourth glass. My mouth sort of drifted open and I stared at him, trying not to laugh; the look on his face was stern but had an underlying agitation that couldn't have been spelled out more clearly if it was, well...spelled out.

Chief's jealousy was showing. Again.

"What? You said it isn't against the rules."

"It isn't."

"Then what's the problem?"

"You could be fucking me."

It's possible I might have choked. I absolutely sloshed my drink all over my hand. And then I requested confirmation, because he hadn't hesitated for a single second and there was no way in hell those words had just come out of his mouth in that order. "Excuse me _what_ did you say?"

"I said _you could be fucking me_."

Well I'd be buggered. The words were quiet and forceful and uttered with absolute intent to be taken seriously. It was getting harder and harder not to bust out laughing and the look on his face was growing more and more terse, which just made it that much funnier to my slightly inebriated self. "Best I recall the last time I spoke with you outside our work environment you said you weren't going to sleep with me."

"I don't have any interest in sleeping with you."

Oh. _Ohhh_.

Well now.

Neither of us seemed to know what we should say next - or do next, for that matter. The words hung between us, confusing, revealing, maybe just a little bit regretted on both sides...because there was no taking them back now, and we'd managed somehow to forget how to human.

"Well...um, I guess there's - "

Before I could finish he was pushing his glass into my hand and grabbing his coat from the rack by the door, and a handful of seconds later he had it on and was turning to me with a look that could only be described as furious chagrin. Mad at himself, mad at me, there was no telling. He was still sober enough to realize the implications of what he'd just said, but just drunk enough to be unreasonable about it.

"Don't put that thermostat past seventy-four or it'll spark when it kicks on." He motioned awkwardly in the general direction of the kitchen. "If your pilot blows out the spark'll blow this house right out of Weemeetwa city limits."

"What? Wait a second, where are you going? You can't drive like this, look at you." He was struggling to get his arm through his coat sleeve and shrugged away from me when I reached out to help.

"I walked."

"You - you walked? From where?"

He was already out the door and halfway to the end of the front walk before he stopped and looked back at me. It was snowing hard now, his breath blowing in chilly billows in front of his face. He pointed somewhere off down the street.

"I'm four houses that way."

"You're kidding me. We're neighbors?"

"The blue one."

I stepped out on the porch and looked down the street. His house was so close I could see the light on in his kitchen window. "You mean that teal monstrosity with the gingerbread eaves and the windowboxes? That's you?"

He frowned so hard it looked for a second like he was having an appendicitis attack. Kevin obviously wasn't the only one around here averse to color variations. "Yeah, that's me. See you in the morning, Morley."

"Wait, Chief - "

He put one hand up as he walked away. "In the morning. G'nite."

I don't know how long I stood there on the porch, watching him walk down the street with that slightly hitching limp that seemed to get worse every time he was around me, but I do know that by the time I heard his front door bang shut I was ready to do one of two things.

Haul my half drunk ass down there and knock on his door, or turn around and go back inside my empty house and finish off that bottle he'd left.

To be honest I couldn't even tell you why I made the choice that I did.

It wasn't ideal, but it was probably the smartest thing I'd done since I'd arrived.

_To be continued..._


	21. The Three Stooges

Morning hurt. God did it hurt - but I had nobody to blame but myself, and when my bed partner groaned as I climbed over him to go to the bathroom and begin the horrific task of readying myself for the day, it made my stomach lurch a little. I yanked the blanket down to expose his head and watched his face scrunch up against the feeble dregs of sunlight dribbling into the bedroom.

"Wake up sunshine, the new day beckons."

Andy made a sound of such apocalyptic dismay that I actually felt sorry for him. If he felt terrible that was my fault too, because my lonely ass just couldn't handle a night by myself after Chief had stumbled off home.

That and the simple fact that I had no bed.

And I had walked, half drunk and more than half frozen, through snowy back yards and ice slicked sidewalks until I somehow managed to find my way to his house, clutching what was left of the whiskey and the unopened bottle of wine up under my coat. He'd welcomed me in, of course...but despite my horny despair from earlier in the evening, I didn't make any attempt to seduce the poor guy. He opened the door in a pair of baggy-assed sweatpants with his thick nerdy glasses down low on his nose, book held against his skull and crossbones Santa sweater and his crazy curly hair tied back with a rubber band - and god help me I was overwhelmed with such a feeling of _like_ for this boy that I just couldn't do it to him. I just held the bottles up and he looked at me, something like sympathy softening his already sweet face.

I didn't know if he knew I'd had what could loosely be called a date with Chief, but I guess it was pretty obvious something hadn't gone well.

He pushed the door open and reached out to me.

"Come here Greta."

I walked into his arms and buried my face against his sweater. It was warm and smelled like Tide. And he just held me, standing there in the open doorway, snow blowing in around us until he finally pushed it shut with his foot. After what felt like several long comforting minutes of feeling his heart beat against my cheek, I pulled away and handed him the bottles.

"Let's get skunkfaced, Slenderman."

"Somebody got shitfaced."

I shot Creeley what was quickly becoming my standard morning Fuck You face and went to my desk to start peeling off my layers. My medium-weight coat wasn't anywhere near adequate for this weather and I'd stolen several of Andy's flannel shirts from his closet that morning. Cade was sitting at his desk diagonal to mine, watching with an amused look on his face as I unbuttoned shirt after shirt and shoved them into my bottom drawer.

"Are you counting?"

He laughed, a little too loud for my delicate hungover ears. "How did you drive like that? You look like the Michelin Man."

"Adapt and overcome, lumberjack."

Creeley snorted from Sarah's desk. "Chief's hung over too."

"No shit?!"

"So is Andy," Kevin volunteered from the corridor. "I just saw him puke in the parking lot."

Cade squealed like a girl. "OH my GOD was there a three-way last night?! Whose place did you wreck? Hopefully not Chief's, old Miss Halloran lives on the other side of him and he's got that big-ass bay window facing east. We confiscated her binocs last month but you know she bought another one."

"This is gonna be on PornHub, mark my words."

Everyone was staring at me. Kevin was standing in the doorway with the dispatch mic in his hand; I could hear someone at the other end squawking angrily about a loud motorcycle downtown. Saint hadn't made it in yet - odds were good it was him. Andy staggered through the front door clutching his stomach, still wearing that skull and crossbones christmas sweater from last night, and in the middle of it all Chief stepped out of his office and rapped on the doorway with his knuckles. The regret on his face was instant, a painful wince flinching in tandem with Andy's and my own at the sudden sharp noise.

"Alright listen up. Everybody - that means you too Cree - get your asses over to the post office for your training. And no screwing around this time, I'm assigning interstate duty to anybody that gives Wilson any trouble. _No exceptions._ We're not gonna have a repeat of last month." He turned around to go back into his office, but stopped and leaned back into the room. "You hear me?!"

"Aye Chief."

"Yup."

"Yes Sir."

"Then get gone, all of you. Except you Pearl." He waved us out and disappeared, shutting his door behind him.

"What happened last month?" I looked around; the irritation on literally every face in the room was a shining testament to the fact that whatever this training shit was, nobody wanted to do it. "What kind of training? And did he say Wilson? _That_ Wilson?"

Cree reached back and thumped Sarah's pen out of her hand, laughing when she punched him in the kidney as he got up off her desk and stretched. "Sensitivity training."

"Sensi- what?? Are you kidding me?" Cree had strolled over to my area and was just standing there, invading my space, grinning at me for the sole purpose and the sole purpose _only_ of annoying me.

"Miss Pearl over there thought it'd be a fun and worthwhile use of our free time to clock some hours learnin' how to be human, or some shit like that. I dunno, I wasn't payin' attention. And you notice she's excused."

Sarah flipped him off without even looking up from her Sudoku. "It's because I already know how to be human, Bobby I-blew-up-the-city-water-tower Creeley. By the time God in all her infinite wisdom got around to putting a little bit of a brain in your head your mother had already tossed you behind the train depot."

Cree wasn't listening; he'd gone over to where Andy was leaning against the wall by the microwave and feigned a jab to his stomach, but Andy didn't even flinch. I watched in a sort of confused amazement as Creeley nodded in approval and clapped the poor sick boy on the shoulder like he was congratulating him. I didn't know what any of that was about, but as far as the sensitivity training circus with Wilson as ringmaster was concerned, I wasn't even mad. This couldn't be anything but hilarious, and God knew I could use a little of that.

We all walked to the post office together - it was two blocks from the station and we marched through the snow like recalcitrant kindergartners on a field trip to the smelting plant, half of us grumbling and the other half whacking everyone with snowballs - and shuffled unhappily into the sorting room to disperse into the hardwood chairs that had been assembled in a semicircle at the center of the mail bins. Wilson the crackhead was standing behind the semicircle, a wide beatific smile plastered across his face.

"Welcome! Welcome guys, come on in, take a seat, there's coffee for after and Ted sent over some donuts." Cree headed straight for the food table and loaded his hands up with chocolate crullers, forgoing the paper plates that were stacked to the side of the coffee pot and just shoving them into his mouth like the uncultured caveman he'd relentlessly proven himself to be. Andy and I sat down at the far end of the semicircle and passed a flask of gin back and forth to settle our hangovers while Wilson did his best to herd the rest of the group into their seats. The taxidermist was there too for some unspecified reason, sitting on the other side of Cade, and he leaned over to wave at me with a big friendly smile that seemed just a little bit on the eager side.

"Steve," he said, tapping himself on the chest like I didn't already know who he was. I squeezed out a forced little return smile and nodded.

"Yeah, we've met about twelve times."

He laughed and fell back into conversation with Cade. Andy gave me a funny look.

"You're friendly with Steve?"

"He knows what I sound like when I pee, I had no choice but to befriend him."

"Oh, well you should marry him then since he's still willing to speak to you." He took the flask from my hand and knocked back another slug of gin, hissing like it hurt.

"What does _that_ mean?"

"It means you pee like a racehorse. It woke me up last night, I thought a pipe had broke."

I was about to hit back with the fact that having an assortment of fruit flavored condoms in the refrigerator did not make him an heir to Casanova's legacy when Wilson clapped his hands and took the center of the room with the air of a man who hadn't just been arrested on Monday.

"Okay guys and...very fast lady." He looked over at me and held one hand up like he expected to get hit. " - and I mean that in the running sense, I'm not implying in any way that you're overly promiscuous - "

Cree snorted from behind us, but his mouth was thankfully full of donuts so we were spared whatever lewd comment he had on the tip of that nasty tongue of his. Wilson glanced nervously at him and kept going. "So today we're going to work on loving each other in appropriate ways and appreciating one another for what we bring to the universal table. Which means - "

"These two over here are already doin' plenty of that. Lovin' on each other." Cree leaned over the back of Andy's chair and planted a loud air kiss right next to his head. "What's she bring to the universal table, Burns? A can of WD40 and some gorilla glue I hope, you two are gonna break the damn legs off it." He grabbed the back of the empty chair next to me and banged it on the floor a few times in a hard steady rhythm of suggestive insinuation.

Cade dipped a finger into his coffee cup and slung a splash of coffee at Cree's face. "Leave 'em alone, ya big bully."

"You wanna try and enforce that request, Sarge?"

There was a second of silence as Cree stood to full height and stared across the room at Cade. Cade just sat there, kicked back in his chair with his arms crossed on his chest, while Andy sighed and tucked the flask back into his shirt pocket. Kevin got up and scooted his chair away from the semicircle.

Something was obviously about to go down, but for the life of me I couldn't make any assumption on who was going to start it.

Wilson, bless his most likely stoned to hell and back heart, immediately went into de-escalation mode. He walked over to Cree and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "This is what I'm talking about guys, we're going to take that animosity and tension and turn it into an appreciation of one another's finer qualities. As you look at each other, try to see your friends and co-workers in abstract terms instead of concrete." He flashed us a bright smile and moved to put an arm around Creeley. "Look past the first assessment that your brain makes and go with what your heart sees." He gave Cree an affectionate squeeze. "Oh look, big guy's shaped like a friend."

"And you're shaped like an asshole, get away from me."

I really don't know what happened next. I do know that Andy slammed his head backward, clocking Cree square in the groin with the back of his skull and then pitching forward to duck the massive fist that swung at him. Steve the taxidermist jumped up out of his chair and ran to the snack table to grab the coffee pot, but instead of cracking somebody over the head with it, he clutched it to his chest like he was protecting the holy grail itself. Cade remained seated, arms still crossed over his chest, tipping his chair back on two legs and throwing his head back to laugh like a freaking hyena as Creeley knocked two chairs out of his way and went after Andy. Andy was scrambling across the floor trying to get to his feet, but all those crazy long legs of his were working against him and Cree had him by the front of his shirt before he could get out of the way. Wilson yelled in alarm for about seven seconds and then gave up and went to stand next to Steve, sighing the put-upon sigh of a guy who knows the best thing he can do is stay alive long enough to fill out the police report.

Kevin was at the back of the room, just watching the proceedings.

And me?

I'd like to be able to say I somehow managed to break things up before they got too out of hand to ever be brought back, but the truth is I didn't even try. What I did do was grab a chair as it skittered past me, fold it flat, and hoist it up over my head to take Creeley out with a solid swing that bent the flimsy metal across his back just as he was slamming Andy into the floor by the neck of his sweater. There was a second of dead silence and sort of a group gasp, then I heard Wilson whisper "Oh my fucking geezus."

Cree stood up slowly, dropping Andy and turning to me with a look of such murderous mayhem on his face that I took a step back. And then the postmaster guy who had let us in stepped into the doorway with an airhorn and let it rip, sending every last one of us into a defensive crouch with our hands over our ears, wailing like a pack of dogs until the air ran out and he shoved a cellphone out in front of himself.

"I'm callin' the Chief!"

Somehow those four words were enough to halt the bloodbath and save my ass before Creeley could get his hands on me. The dust settled, Andy kicked Cree in the kneecap, Steve returned the coffee pot to its warming pad, and Wilson took a long sad survey of the room before nodding in resignation at the destruction around him. Chairs were scattered everywhere and a mail bin had been tipped over, strewing letters and bubblemailers all over the floor. He struggled to assemble a weak smile and closed the meeting with a halfhearted shrug.

"See you all next month, I guess."

"Fighting at sensitivity training? Am I the only one who sees the buffoon-headed irony here?"

Chief was so done it wasn't even amusing. He slammed his phone down on his desk and rubbed his eyes hard. "That was Ed Lemmons, he's sending over the bill for two broken chairs and a coffee pot, plus cleanup. But I have a better idea - you three dipshits are going to clean up the mess you made, and then you're doing overtime on interstate duty until the chairs are paid for."

Creeley groaned but didn't say anything. Andy started to whine but Chief cut him off. "To say I expect it out of Cree goes without saying - "

Cree nodded. "Yeah that's fair."

" - but you, Andy? What the hell is wrong with you?"

Andy shuffled his feet and looked down at the floor, shrugging. He looked like a kid in the principal's office. "Sorry Chief."

"And I don't even know what to say to you, Miss Already On Probation."

"Sir, if I might - "

"No you might not. Shut up."

"But Sir - "

The finger of authority went up. "Not another word Morley." He scrubbed one hand down his face and laid his head back on the back of his chair, closing his eyes to shut us out. I knew his hangover had to be killing him - mine definitely was, and I had no idea how much more he'd drank after he left my place. I did know that Andy and I had finished off two bottles of wine and then he'd whipped up a pitcher of margaritas in a sno-cone maker shaped like a clown, which was such a bad idea I couldn't even begin to tell you. "Alright, all three of you are patrolling mile marker 18 tonight until 6:00 when Turnbull HP start their road run. And if I get one complaint about anything from out there, _anything,_ you're all suspended for a week - no, make that two - without pay and doing a month of lunch duty at the geezer center. We clear?"

Andy raised his hand tentatively. "The coffee pot was Cree, he slapped it over on our way out. And I'm not actually a police officer...I mean...you kinda seem to have forgotten I'm only a gopher, I can't be doing official cop work. It's illegal."

Cree nearly choked on a booming guffaw that made me and Andy both jump where we stood. "Did the word _illegal_ really just fall out of your pot-smokin' mouth, dude? You are literally everybody's dealer from here to Looton."

"Fraserville, I'm not allowed in Looton."

Chief wasn't impressed and sat there just staring at the pair of them until they stopped talking. "You assisted Officer Morley in apprehending a suspect two days ago, correct?"

"Well...yeah..."

"And she deputized you during the course of that pursuit, correct?"

"Um...yeah, but to be fair I said no thank you when she did it."

Chief just continued staring at him, those icy blue eyes burning a hole right through his head. Andy finally coughed a little and looked at the floor. "Yes Sir, marker 18 till six."

"Anyone else want to plead their case? Creeley?"

"Nope I did it, I'll own it." He gave Andy a shove and he fell over against me. "Fuckin' pothead, rattin' me out. That's gonna get you killed one of these days."

Chief shot Cree a look that could have withered an evergreen, then looked at me without changing his expression. "Morley?"

"No Sir, no case to be pled. We made a mess, we'll clean it up."

"Damn right you will. Go." He waved us away and Andy and Cree immediately headed for the door, pushing each other like idiot children who just got grounded by dad. "Morley, you stay."

The look on Cree's face would have infuriated me if I hadn't been so overcome with a chill right at the moment he turned to look at me. The door clicked shut a second later behind the two of them, but the sound of their footsteps stopped and I knew at least one of them was parking himself on the other side to eavesdrop, likely to be joined by at least two more.

Chief looked like shit. Still handsome as hell, but shit's shit. He blew a long slow breath out and then spoke in a voice quiet enough to be respectful of both our inflated heads. "How you feeling?"

"Like shit, Sir. And now apparently I have marker 18 duty, whatever that is."

"Don't call me Sir when we're alone."

The words were suggestive, but the tone wasn't anywhere near it. He sort of sounded like he wanted to die and didn't have much preference as to what was done with his corpse. I could sympathize with that.

"Not into that, huh?"

He just looked at me, so I cleared my throat and rushed along like I hadn't just made an embarrassingly pathetic attempt to flirt with my boss. "If you don't mind me asking - " I almost said _Sir_ but caught myself before it slipped. "Why did you rush off last night?"

"You were drunk. I was drunk. Neither of us was in any shape for consent and I couldn't have vouched for restraint."

I felt my head whip up and regretted the movement instantly. So Chief was a horny drunk - good information to have, information I would absolutely be storing away for later trips to the Liquor Barn. But he was obviously a good man as well, and that almost always won out no matter how many Tequila Fannybangers have been imbibed.

"Please keep an eye on Andy out there, alright Morley? Cree's gonna ditch you the second you get there so I'm counting on you to be the responsible party."

"Why, what goes on on marker 18 duty?"

He reached for his phone without answering me and I knew he was done with our conversation. Talking to Chief was like driving toward a concrete wall - once you run out of road, everything stops one way or another.

"Sir?"

He looked up, pausing mid-dial, eyebrows up to full capacity waiting for me to wrap it up and get out. There was no indication on his face anywhere that he was thinking about what had been said between us the night before, which wasn't a lot to be honest. We had settled in on top of my crates and ripped into the whiskey like there would be no consequences later, our conversation carefully staying in its designated lane between old jobs and future plans and a lot of silence while we refilled our glasses. I'd found out Chief didn't have a whole bunch of lofty aspirations for coming days, other than keeping his crew from killing each other and setting the town or themselves on fire. His main goal for the foreseeable future seemed to revolve mostly around making sure if they _did_ burn the place to the ground, Andy got out alive.

That struck me a little bit odd, but it wasn't the first time he'd indicated the big Irish kid was a priority. I'd sort of halfway assumed they were related somehow, but now I was leaning more toward secret illegitimate offspring than distant nephew. Only Andy didn't seem to be aware of it, drifting through life in a happy sort of obliviousness that I half envied, just existing and spending a lot of time staring at snowflakes as they fell.

It was an ideal life, if one didn't have plans.

Which I did. I had one and only one plan for as far down the road as I could see, and that was to get out of this place and back to where I belonged.

Chief had stared into his glass for a long time, finally nodding as the lovely amber liquid swirled around in one of the two cut crystal glasses that had made the trip to Weesayfuckalot with me. And then he had raised it toward me and smiled, a wistful sort of half smile that might have been sadness just as likely as it could have been nothing but the booze.

"To getting home," he'd said. Quietly, with no words to follow. We'd downed our glasses, hissed out the burn and made our ridiculous booze-bite faces, and then refilled them before the conversation turned to hockey. 

And now he was staring at me across his desk, still holding his phone with that distinctly bleary look that comes with a particular bastard of a hangover, waiting for me to speak.

"Thanks. For - " I hesitated, confused for a second. What _was_ I thanking him for? I wasn't sure, exactly. For being a gentleman and walking out before we wrecked each other? For not embarrassing me by allowing me to make a pass at him so he could rebuff it? For being so damn beautiful that it physically hurt to look at that damn face of his? For keeping Andy alive and safe from whatever the hell it was that they all seemed to be watching over their shoulders for so that I'd have a warm place to crawl to instead of going shopping for a bed of my own?

For sending me out after a goddamn llama, and then after a pissed off horse, and now sentencing me to marker 18 duty - whatever the hell that was - with _Creeley?_

Yeah, I owed him a big thanks for that, because it was currently all that was keeping me from climbing across his desk and seeing just how much further north those sassy eyebrows of his could go. I settled for staying where I stood, offering him a weak smile that confessed to the headache that was pounding behind it. "Thanks for coming over last night. I...I enjoyed that."

He just stared at me for a few seconds, then sort of nodded like he wasn't sure how to respond. "Thanks for inviting me."

A numbing sort of awkward silence surrounded us after he finished that single sentence, and in the embarrassed misery of unspoken words that nobody seemed able to say, we both looked away. His eyes fell back to the phone in his hand and mine went to the floor, and a secondary survival instinct fired up just enough to start me moving toward the door before it got all kinds of worse. My hand was on the knob when he stopped me one more time, his voice back to normal volume now, sending the listeners on the other side of the door skittering to less incriminating locations.

"Morley - "

"Yes Sir?"

Something flinched in his face, just the tiniest little twitch at the corner of an eye, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out what would have provoked it other than my refusal to obey the Sir thing.

"Make sure Andy's wearing Kevlar this time. Please."

I nodded. There was the tiniest bit of disappointment welling in my gut that he hadn't indicated he'd enjoyed my company, though common sense argued that it was likely I just wasn't very much fun after the third shot unless I was getting naked.

And Chief didn't seem to be in any hurry to find out one way or the other.

And _that_ rubbed me fifty shades of wrong, because if there was one thing that had been heavy on my mind over the course of the last two or three days it was the image my head had conjured of Tommy Davis in nothing but skin. I was sorely tempted to get Andy shot on purpose just to see what level shitstorm he was capable of kicking up, but there was just one tiny problem with that.

I liked Andy way too much.

I was halfway out the door without my now-standard _Yes Sir_ when he stopped me one final time, which was just about one final time past too many at this point. The fake little smile on my face was way more about frustration than politeness by now, but if this Davis guy could be all about business and the proper way to comport oneself with fourteen sticks up one's ass, so could I. I leveled him a cold stare above the fake smile.

He didn't seem fazed, though there was something vaguely reminiscent of an amused little grin lurking in there somewhere. "The guys like to get together on Friday night after work, we sorta rotate locations. This week's me. You're welcome to join us if you want...you know where, right?"

Yeah, he was grinning. The ass knew he'd stroked my fur the wrong direction and he was loving it. Dick.

"The gingerbread monstrosity? Hideous teal shutters? Makes my butt clench up every time I drive past it on my way to work, that one?"

"That'd be the one." His grin broke wide as he leaned back in his chair, shooing me out the door with one hand while dialing his phone with the other. "Seven-ish. Dress warm, these animals aren't housebroken."

Hiding my own grin as I crossed the main room to retrieve my coat and get the keys to Unit Two - or was it Three? - from Kevin was just about the most difficult thing I'd had to do in ohhh I'd say an hour at least...but for some stupid reason it just wouldn't back down no matter how hard I struggled to keep a straight face. I'd been invited into the station's Friday night routine, and nothing, _nothing,_ not since seventh grade when Paulina Malone handed me a hand written invitation to her no-adults birthday party, had ever felt quite this validating.

_To be continued..._


	22. The Morley Trifecta

"What is marker 18?"

"The rest stop out on the interstate."

"Oh...so we just hang out there until six this evening? I don't see what the big deal is - "

"Six _a.m._ That's when Turnbull sends their Highway Patrol out."

Andy was staring out the window, the closest I'd ever seen to an unhappy look on his face aside from the scowl he occasionally had for Cree. It seemed the two were nemesis of some kind, but the odd thing about their relationship was that it was obviously that - a relationship, of sorts. Sometimes a turbulent one, but not always, and that was the weird part. Cree had turned suddenly and seriously protective of Andy twice in my presence, yet they were quick to go to blows at what was starting to be the drop of a hat. It was weirdly disconcerting and for that alone my interest was piqued beyond my ability to contain it. I was about to have a lot of hours alone with at least one of them, maybe both if Cree didn't bail on us, and I fully intended to ask as many questions as I could before I got shut down. But basic informational priorities couldn't be ignored and I was on my way to this mysteriously undesirable marker 18 place, chauffering my two colleagues for the night, and nobody had bothered to fill me in on either protocol or procedure for the assignment. It was a shit job obviously, reserved for punishment and doled out for the worst infractions. I needed intel.

"So what's so special about a rest stop that it needs to be watched all night?"

Andy shrugged, resting his forehead against the window. His breath was making a foggy film across the glass and he was drawing absently in it with one long finger. "Weird stuff happens there."

A growly voice came from the back seat to elaborate. "It's one of those liminal spaces where interdimensional shit goes down."

I looked at Creeley in the mirror; he was laying across the seat with his boots up on the right side window and his head resting against the left door. He barely fit.

"Well I don't want geezer duty at the old folks home so I'm gonna behave. Stay away from me when we get there Creeley, I'm not getting in more trouble for you."

He laughed softly but didn't argue. Andy sighed and wiped the fog from his window. "I already do that. It's not so bad."

"Do what? Lunch duty at the rest home?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Why not?"

"Raggedy Andy's our resident do-gooder. Makin' up for past sins."

Ooh. Big guy kept dropping hints and I kept gathering them carefully, tucking them into my growing pile of conspiracy theories about Not-Deputy Andy Burns, local mild mannered reprobate and the best shag I'd ever had in my life. There was something just slightly wrong about him and everybody but me seemed to know exactly what it was. I intended to change that, sooner rather than later if I could swing it. "What kind of sins would that be? You forget to take your library books back in time?"

Andy didn't say anything and when I looked in the rearview mirror at Creeley, I caught him staring at him so hard that I'm sure the guy could feel it without turning around. There was a _no fucking around_ warning in that look that I'd seen twice before - once in the donut shop when he'd snarled at Andy not to say anything else to me, and once from Chief in his office in response to -

I had to think about it for a minute, and when it came back to me I felt distinctly uneasy.

_Fuckin' pothead, rattin' me out. That's gonna get you killed one day._

The look on Chief's face had been an unsubtle yet undeniable order not to say another word. And Cree had quickly shut up in unquestioning obedience to the unspoken command.

Something was up with Andy's past, I could do enough math to sort that much...and by god I was going to eventually get it out of _somebody._

Cree didn't ditch us the minute we got there like Chief had assured me he would, a fact that sort of surprised me when the big lout parked himself on a picnic table and stretched out for a nap. Andy wandered off down to a little pond that was iced over - just like everything else in this godforsaken place - to play with some geese that had started honking noisily the second we pulled up. They seemed to know him, adding yet another little layer of weird folksy mystery to his growing legend. I probably wasn't too far off the mark with my leprechaun theory, despite the fact that he was just about six and a half feet taller than he should be.

Nothing around this place fit the job description, why should the local cryptids bother adhering to it?

Once he was out of hearing range I decided now was the time to sort some shit with my current company. I wasn't of a mind to go to blows like we had that morning at sensitivity training, but if there was one thing you learned immediately upon induction into the police force, it's that you can't work with people whose allegiances are unknown. It felt like a pretty sure bet that Cree's allegiances were strictly with himself - but he had a badge on him somewhere, and for that simple fact I knew he had to have at least a vague understanding of team loyalty. He sure hadn't shown it yet, but my stinging backside notwithstanding, something in me felt like he would step up once a certain line was crossed. Figuring out where that line was laid was a detail I very much needed for future reference. Raging Norwegian Santas wielding car antennas obviously wasn't it, so at least I had a place to start.

"Are we going to get along, Bobby Creeley?" I asked him as he settled on the table with Andy's Kevlar vest under his head serving as a makeshift pillow. "It's okay if we're not, I just want to know what sort of cop you are and whether I can trust you in a clinch." I glanced around the rest area at snow, snow, and more snow. And Andy, down at the pond throwing something to the geese that kept trying to chase him. "If something of a higher consequence-magnitude than Red Hanrahan goes down, are you going to have my back or should I just shoot you and fudge the report?"

He turned his head and looked at me, one eye squinted shut.

"I'm not really a cop."

"Okay, you gonna just throw that out there and leave it or are you going to tell me what it means?"

"It means what it means. I didn't go to cop school. Academy, whatever." He shifted with an exaggerated groan and I wondered if that chair I'd clocked him with had actually done him any damage. Probably negligible at best. "But I got skills and I needed a job, so it was either stay here and take Tommy's offer or move off to Michigan."

"And he didn't help you pack and drive you to the airport himself. Somebody needs to have a talk with that man." My words failed to get a rise out of him - he feigned a loud snore - so I chose to press a little harder. "Alright, I'll bite. What skills?"

The grin that crinkled his face was so sincere and overjoyed that it was almost cute. _Almost._ "Munitions. I'm an explosives guy."

"Why does that not surprise me in the slightest."

"Yeah, right? I like to blow shit up. And I'm good at it. I've got the touch." He wiggled his fingers, then laughed and turned his face back to the sky. "Not much opportunity for boomboom around here though, so sometimes I go places where they need help gettin' stuff forcibly reduced to the smallest particles possible."

Sounded about right. Bomb squad guys were all the same no matter where you went - batshit insane with a fetish for loud noises and mushroom clouds. "Tell me you didn't blow the roof off Notre Dame."

A look of sheer jealousy crossed his face and it was immediately clear that he would've if he could've. "Naw, goddammit. Not really my style. I like protests though. I went to Standing Rock loaded for bear but it turned out to be one of those peaceful things. That sucked. Protests are always iffy."

I felt myself do one of those cartoony doubletakes followed by a hard blink of disbelief.

"You were at Standing Rock?"

"Yeah. I mean, they aren't my tribe, but we're all people right?" He craned his neck around for a second to check on Andy's whereabouts, then settled again with a big dramatic sigh. "Saw some genuine fuck-the-police level shit out there. Watched those jackbooted assholes turn high pressure hoses on crowds with women and kids in 'em. People gettin' shot with rubber bullets. Met this girl, goddamn beautiful girl, she'd come in with her grandpa from San Diego to stand with the locals and got shot in the fuckin' back helpin' some kid that got knocked down. She couldn'ta been more than sixteen, seventeen. Pepper bombs everywhere, just all fucked up." He scrubbed his face hard, like the memory was agitating him. "And I saw brave shit that'd just make ya want to sob. An old lady Chieftan rode to the front line on her horse and just sat there, stared this line of cops in riot gear right in the eyes for, like, three hours before they couldn't do it anymore and walked off. Stupid fuckers. No cause, you know? Just there for the paycheck and the fun of hurtin' innocent people who just want to be heard. And that old lady sat there on her horse for half the night till her people had to come get her because she was about to fall over. Never moved."

"Geezus."

"Yeah. So I come back here and I'm all _we are the enemy we are the oppressor_ \- I'm an anti-cop cop anyway but that cinched it, ya know? And Chief reminds me that this is Weemeetwa fuckin' Minnesota. The biggest offender we got here is Wilson and whatever low-grade crime he's up to this week, and Andy over there gettin' busted for weed every ten minutes. We got no reason to be assholes and hurt people. And we don't. That ain't us." He laid a thick forearm across his eyes. "There ain't a bad one in this bunch 'cept me, and I'm not that bad, truth be told. But if we had the opportunity, would we be those guys?"

Cree was shocking me every time he opened his mouth. The gigantic neanderthal was pulling a Shrek on me, exposing layers I'd have never guessed were there. Of all the people I'd met in this town so far he was the last one I would have expected to be bothered by police brutality, and Andy had the knot on his forehead to back me up on that one. "I'd like to think it has to do with the person themselves."

"Naw, it's the badge. It's the uniform. Part of it's the crazy white boys they push through the recruitment process but the rest - you put a borderline psychopath in a uniform and tell him he's got the right to use his gun on whoever gives him an excuse, you've got what we got now in the cities. Guys lookin' for excuses. Findin' 'em everywhere. Mass assholery."

"As opposed to individual assholery like you practice."

"Yep."

I thought about it for a minute, the pair of us falling into a silence that was punctuated every few seconds by Andy scolding the geese for biting his fingers. "To be fair, it's easier to handle when it's just one guy."

Cree laughed. "See? I'm all that's keepin' this place from bein' the LAPD. Takin' one for the team, bein' the asshole so they don't have to."

"This place will _never_ be the LAPD."

"Thank fuck for that." He stared up at the sky for a long while, then ran a big hand through his impossibly shaggy hair. "I think about that girl. Cara, that was her name. Said her dad and grandpop were Saskatchewan Cree. Beautiful girl. Didn't belong on the front lines, but then nobody does."

"Sounds like big guy fell a little bit in love."

"You fall in love with everybody at a thing like that. Only time I've ever felt like there was nobody around me I wanted to smack." He glanced over at me with a cursory flick of his eyes that I couldn't read. "Except the cops. Them I wanted to fuckin' kill. But I don't guess you'd understand that, would you."

"What's that mean?"

"LAPD." A huge hand waved dismissively in my direction. "Big blue brotherhood. You all watch each other's backs out there, don't ya."

"Not necessarily."

"Yeah right."

His shift in tone was starting to rub me wrong, but I'd have been surprised if it didn't devolve into something to put an edge on the begrudging admiration I was beginning to feel for him. This was Cree, if he wasn't rubbing everybody wrong it was time to start making sure the tape hadn't peeled off your mirrors. "Look, I wasn't in the main force, okay? I was strictly high speed pursuit, I drove. That's all I did. I did specialized training and I went straight into the vehicle squadron, I was never a _cop_ cop. So pass me by with that blue brotherhood shit, I know it goes on but I was never in it."

"Yeah I guess you didn't exactly fit in."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're three minorities wrapped up in one."

"How'd you land on that number?"

He held his middle finger up. "One, you're female. Two, you're Black or Latina or somethin', I ain't decided what yet. And three, you're - "

I didn't get to hear what my third supposed minority status was; Andy had come back up the hill with his phone out and interrupted us as he was dialing. "I'm getting pizza, what do you guys want?"

Cree pulled the collar of his coat up around his face and grunted with an unmistakable finality, a pretty fair indication our conversation was over. "You know what I like, numbnuts."

Andy looked at me expectantly, waiting to hear my input. "I dunno, just get whatever you guys like and I'll pick off what I don't like."

"That's very mom of you Greta." He dialed, wandering around in a little circle while he waited for the other end to answer. "You're allowed to be assertive you know. Say what you like and expect to get it, you don't have to be accommodating just because you're female."

"Look who's been listenin' to that jackhole Wilson and his new age feminist horse shit."

I think I probably stared at Andy a lot longer than I should have, but his words struck hard for some reason and I felt a little bit rattled. I knew I should be picking up a rock or something to hurl at his head for implying that I was being a stereotypical female doormat just because I couldn't commit to pizza toppings, but I couldn't do it...because despite the indignant resentment I was feeling right about then, I knew he was right. I'd never been overly guilty of letting the room decide for me on any given subject, but for some reason I felt cowed in Creeley's presence. There was no telling if it was the overwhelming stench of overbearing masculinity that billowed off of him in waves or if I was just tired and not in the mood to speak any louder, but once Andy'd said it it wouldn't go away.

It wasn't just Creeley. I'd fought hard against my exile, standing in Hawk's office shouting and whining, but ultimately I'd stopped kicking and sat down to accept my sentence simply because it was easier just to take it and wait for it to end. It was a pattern I seemed to have fallen into just about the time I was falling into his bed five or so years back. And it wasn't serving me very well at the moment.

I knew what I liked. There was no reason not to let them know it too.

"Pineapple. I want pineapple and bacon."

He grinned and winked at me while Cree yanked his coat collar down to shoot me a withering glare. "Fuckin' _pineapple?_ Figures. Goddamn city bullshit."

An eighteen wheeler pulling two trailers and moving way too fast for road conditions blasted past before he could continue what I'm sure was shaping up to be a glorious tirade, blaring its horn in response to Andy and Cree both making the airhorn gesture in the air, pumping their fists like little kids in the back seat of the family station wagon competing to see who can get the most truckers to honk back. Cree cackled and slapped Andy on the shoulder hard enough to make him do a little dance to keep to his feet.

"I take it you know whoever that was."

They looked at each other and Cree snorted. "Tell her about Miss Mae, Swizzlestick."

Andy blushed, I swear to god. Maybe it was just the cold chapping his cheeks, but he looked genuinely bashful. But he didn't say anything, and as he dug around in his pocket to pull out a suspiciously crumpled looking cigarette and light it up while we waited for our pizza to be delivered, I turned my attention back to Creeley. He seemed willing to talk and my need to keep gathering intel was mighty. I also didn't want to have to arrest Andy for the funky smoke he was blowing and give him his right to remain silent before I got him spilling some words of his own on a few choice topics. "So what exactly are we supposed to do out here?"

Cree shrugged, pausing just long enough from pelting Andy with little pebbles to bend over and scoop up some more. "Dunno."

"You've been sent out here before, right?"

"A few times, yeah."

"And what did you do?"

"Went home."

Andy passed him the joint and jumped up and down in place to warm himself. "I'm not supposed to be here, I'm not a cop."

"So I've heard."

"None of us are, son," Creeley hissed around a mouthful of illicit fog. "Morley over here's never done nothin' but drive."

"She's good at it though."

"Damn straight I am."

"Yeah I've heard. Stopsign over here came back to the station pissin' himself that day you ran Wilson. Chief said you took the alleys in that fuckin' Taurus so fast he couldn't call in your location before you were somewhere else. He was yellin' at Kevin to get somebody out there before you ended up in Kiawassa County." A delighted giggle shook the big guy's shoulders. "He was so fuckin' flustered tryin' to chase you down."

"That's what he gets for leaving the station. Something tells me Chief is better suited for delegating chores than doing them himself."

"Hey, don't discount The Man. Chief'll surprise ya if you watch him long enough. He's quiet that way."

I was starting to feel funny; Cree was blowing smoke in my face, grinning like he knew what he was doing, but nothing in me felt quite up to getting mad about it. Whatever they were smoking was potent and pleasant and I finally reached out to snatch it out of Andy's mouth and take a puff. I coughed a little on the first inhale, but god...the subtle calm that washed over my head was enough to relax that hitching pain I'd had in my hip since the first time I'd assplanted on the ice. I wasn't even minding Creeley's company so much anymore - his Standing Rock story made him seem a little more human, a little less insufferable, and watching him and Andy play rock/paper/scissors and beat the shit out of each other for losing was striking me way more humorous than it should have.

Marker 18 duty was shaping up to be not such a shit detail after all.

_To be continued..._


	23. On A Clear Night You Can See Minneapolis

We sat there on the picnic table passing that joint around till it was just a smoldering nub barely big enough to hold onto, giggling like idiots at Andy's theory about the Denny's on Route 12 being the center of the universe when Steve the taxidermist pulled up in a jacked four wheel drive with a very deceased horned quadruped of some kind in the back. I wasn't even remotely surprised when he climbed out of the cab with our pizza. It was getting to where nothing made me blink twice anymore. I was only four days in but I was already accepting shit like it was gospel.

"Taxidermist-slash-pizza parlor. Because why the hell not."

Steve shot me what I'd swear to god was the adoring smile of a smitten man and handed over the pepper packets. "I don't cook 'em, I just deliver 'em."

"And thank god for that." I motioned toward the dead thing in the bed of his truck while Cree cracked the newly formed ice off the tabletop with the heel of his boot and started clearing it off in chunks so we could eat. "Is that thing on the menu?"

"At the cafe, yeah. Tomorrow's venison stew."

"Did you hit it with your truck?"

"Um...no?" He cast a nervous glance at Creeley, who was up on top of the picnic table doing a stomp and kick dance to clear the last of the ice. He kicked a big chunk at Andy, who ducked it with surprising grace for someone with that many extra limbs. That big shaggy head came up with narrowed eyes to shoot a threatening look at Steve.

"What'd I tell you about that, Hurley."

"Yeah I know, damn things keep runnin' out in the street though. Brady Jorgemeister's huntin' dogs are too slow to track 'em so they head for the road. _Smack."_ He made a slamming gesture with his palms, then the smitten look turned to confusion as he read the receipt. "Who the hell asked for pineapple?"

Creeley pointed at me as he snatched the box out of Andy's hands. "It's an LA thing, get with the program."

I grabbed the box from Cree and held it under my nose. Garlicky warmth, golden crust, and lightly toasted pineapple wafted up in a wet-dream wave that made my mouth water despite the scent of embalming fluid coming off Steve's coat. "No it isn't, everybody likes pineapple on pizza."

"I don't."

"I do, I love it." Steve and Cree both froze in place and stared at Andy like he'd sprouted a pair of antlers decorated with blinking christmas lights. "What? I lived in New York for a while, it's pretty common there."

"What the hell was an Irishman doing living in New York? As if you living in Weepeediddlydee isn't the weird part of the story."

"Are you kidding? Irish have a long history with New York, we're like ninety percent of the police force there. And half the dock work." He stopped long enough to duck another huge chunk of ice lobbed at his head from Creeley's direction. "And my mom moved us to the States when I was twelve."

Ooh. _Details._ Cree was side eyeing him but Andy hadn't noticed yet, so I nudged him verbally, just enough to keep him going. "Us?"

"Me and my brother."

"Oh wow - there's two of you. That's...both frightening and adorable, to be honest."

Cree reached over and slapped him on the shoulder hard enough to almost knock him off the bench. "No life stories. Eat your damn dinner."

"Fuck off."

Steve immediately backed up - he'd obviously spent enough time around these guys to know what was likely coming and was well aware that the best option was always going to be retreat and watch from a safe distance. I remembered him diving for the coffee pot during the throwdown at sensitivity training and moved to stand beside him on the assumption that he would instinctively know the best spot to spectate from. He smiled at me as I moved over beside him, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his coat and sort of just...stared at me. I gave him a quick smile back and a _Hi how are ya_ head-tip meant to discourage further conversation, then assumed the same posture and stood there watching as Creeley sighed and slapped his huge hands down on the stone picnic table.

"Okay boy, you and me, we're doin' this. You been sassin' me ever since this girl come to town and I'm tired of your skinny ass." He stood up to all six-foot-something of his imposing height and brought his fists up in a casual boxer stance. "One punch, whoever hits dirt has to shut the fuck up until I'm done with my pizza. Come on."

Andy groaned and put his slice down. I thought he would at least attempt to talk some sense to Cree, get him to stand down, but in the next breath he was standing up and flexing his knuckles as he walked around the table to where the big guy was waiting.

"Wait, you're not really going to - "

Before I could finish my protest Andy doubled up a fist and drew back; by the time I realized what was about to happen he let fire with what by any means of judgment could be deemed a devastating blow that Creeley took square in the face without even attempting to evade - which he could have done easily, because it was a slow punch despite the surprising amount of power behind it. Steve flinched and covered his mouth with both hands while I jumped damn near out of my coat at the messy sounding splat of knuckles hitting jawbone.

"Holy shit guys!!"

Cree's head slammed to one side, then slowly turned back toward Andy with a wide grin spreading across it. He lowered his eyes for just a second, then spit a mouthful of red onto the snow at his feet.

"You're gettin' better kid. I could'a run to the outhouse and taken a dump before it landed though." He rubbed his jaw, opening and closing his mouth a few times before nodding toward Andy's hand. "Break anything?"

Andy stopped dancing around, shaking his fist in pain and cursing in whatever language they speak wherever the hell he was from - Dublin or Brooklyn, it honestly could have been either. He gave his right hand a hard shake and stood back upright with a hard grimace, a single tear of obvious agony dribbling down his cheek. "Goddammit...uggggh, _fuck_. No, nothing's broken. _Christ!"_

"Okay then - " Cree brought his right fist up...and I don't know what sort of misguided heroicism overtook me in the two seconds between him clenching his knuckles and letting loose, but I shrugged off Steve's panicked grab at the back of my coat and jumped in between them, screaming for him to stop with my hands up as if that would halt the jackhammer swing that was coming.

It did, amazingly. Which was good, because if he'd hit me I swear to god I'd have haunted his jackwad ass for the rest of his borderline worthless life. He yanked his arm up to a screeching halt and narrowed his eyes at me with a look that definitely had the term _crazy bitch_ in it _-_ and when I opened my own eyes to stare at him in abject horror at how close I'd come to getting knocked clean out, he was just standing there looking confused.

Andy, however, was clearly mortified. He was the first one to speak, and when he did his voice was about five notes higher than normal. "Oh my god Greta what are you _doing??_ He could have snapped your neck, geezus!"

I knew that. I should have been petrified at how close I came to having my face rearranged, but to be honest Andy's face was much more delicately boned than mine and the rage I was feeling at him taking that caliber of a hit promptly took over from that rapidly fleeing stab of fear. And then I let loose, because I'd had just about enough of the random acts of horrific violence between what was obviously the most mismatched pair of people in the entire state of...wherever the fuck we were. If it had been Cree and Saint - or even Cree and Cade - I'd have signed off on it happily to watch from the sidelines and make bets with Sarah on who got their ass handed to them with a pretty pink bow on it. But this was Cree and _Andy,_ and that just had all kinds of malfunction tattooed across it.

"What is _wrong_ with you idiots? I mean _what is wrong with you??_ I don't know what kind of twisted Inspector Clouseau versus Cato relationship you two have going on but I wish you'd conduct it when I'm not around." I turned around to make sure Andy was listening, since he seemed just as willing as Creeley to play this stupid game. "God you're idiots."

Cree still had his fist up but offered me a half admiring raise of an eyebrow. "Heh. I got that reference." Andy was staring at his shoes and I could see him trying really hard to keep a grin from sneaking across his face.

"What? What is wrong with you? What's so goddamn funny?"

He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet for a second, then said quietly, "It's _Chief_ Inspector Clouseau, actually."

"Alright that's it, I'm done. Beat the shit out of him Creeley."

Whatever the hell it was, this weirdly structured animosity between them, it seemed to be over and the piss was gone from Cree's expression. He reached down to grab a new slice of pizza, crammed the entire thing into his mouth, then dropped the crust back into the box and wiped his hands on his knees. "Well it's been fun kids but that's me. See ya Great One." He waved at me, that same dismissive brush of one hand that he always did when acknowledging me in any way. "Andrew Bartholomew Fuckup, you mind your manners or I'll whip your ass." And then without another word, he thumped himself on the chest to break loose a belch and walked off.

And just like that, it was over and we were blessed with the sudden absence of Bobby Creeley to finish our pizza in peace. Steve seemed more confused about his pet name for me than any of the rest of it, and that made me wonder just how long this bloody little game had been on the books. He stared at me for a second with what looked like the tiniest bit of potential jealousy in what I'd just noticed was a pair of fairly nice deepset dark eyes. "Great One? He must be impressed with you, he usually calls people asswipes."

"He's a bastard."

Andy picked up the discarded crust and took a bite of it. "It's an anagram of your name."

"Yes I know it's an anagram of my name." Cree was stomping off down the hill toward the trees, away from the parking lot where the cruiser was sitting gathering a steadily increasing coat of powdery snow. "Where's he going?"

"Cree's a forest guy, he's out there a lot. Nature and shit. He knows his way around."

Steve nodded in agreement but didn't say anything.

"But we're like, eight miles from town."

"He'll get there."

We all stared after him until he disappeared into the woods like a sasquatch headed home from a productive afternoon of terrorizing the villagers, and then I turned on Andy with all the tired venom of a grade school principal scolding one half of a playground scuffle. It was funny as hell that he was the only one who'd thrown a punch in this particular fight.

"Why you let him bully you so much?"

"Huh? He's not bullying me, he's doing his job."

"And what job would that be that requires him to beat up on you, exactly?"

He shook his head, inspecting the rapidly bruising knuckles of his right hand. "Naw, he's teaching me. Sort of like Apollo Creed and Rocky. Chief thinks I need to learn some skills other than being a pacifist and picking pockets."

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Steve slowly shaking his head, but his gesture seemed more like a warning than a disagreement. He was staring hard at Andy. How many of the locals had I seen doing that in the last four days?

"Well I hate to break it to you cutiepie, you're not really boxer material." I reached over and poked him in the chest, then ran my finger up his chin when he looked down at it. "Lover, not fighter. That was a pretty impressive pop though. I'm all aquiver."

He smiled, and I swear it was like that scene in Snow White when the chick started to sing and the sun came out and all the little woodland creatures sighed. He shoved his bruised hand into the snow piled up against the open pit grill while I sat down and started eating the pineapple and bacon that Cree had picked off his pizza, wondering why his job description involved teaching a sweet boy from Ireland how to take a hit that could put a rhino down...and why literally everyone I'd met so far seemed to have a chronic aversion to Not-Deputy Andy Burns putting more than five words together about himself.

"Help me here Andy."

Irishboy had accompanied me like the gentleman I knew he was, walking just slightly behind me down the slick snowy slope to the outbuilding that housed the public restrooms and unmanned visitor center so I could purge the coffee I'd been holding all afternoon; I didn't much care for the lovesick way Steve the Taxidermist had been looking at me since the sensitivity training drama, so I was going to be forgoing using his bathroom for the foreseeable future. Apparently he was holding a closely guarded kink for women who weren't too ladylike to hit a guy with a chair and now I was going to be risking a perpetual UTI as a result. It couldn't hurt to scope out a few alternatives...although for the life of me I couldn't figure out why I had such a strong aversion to using my own bathroom.

Maybe because it was in my house...where I didn't actually live, and which was empty with the exception of a few big half unloaded boxes of nothing of any real importance.

If that was any sort of a euphemism for what my life had become, I needed to pee too badly to think about it.

Pamphlets lined the outer wall of the outbuilding, hawking niche touristy things like lumberjack logging competitions and a town square festival in the Spring with a county fair and livestock show. Weewhinyfuckboys was seeming just about as exciting as I'd guessed. And now I was headed into the outdoor ladies' room at an officially designated liminal space in the middle of an icy tundra by the interstate, and I just couldn't hold it any longer. Andy cocked his head to one side and looked at me like Hobo always looked at the phone when it rang as he followed me inside the cinderblock structure. He didn't seem to notice he'd followed me all the way to a doorless stall until I was inside it.

"What? What am I - oh god no Greta, please."

The sound of utter dismay in his voice was funny as hell, matched only by the look of utter dismay on his face when I wriggled my jeans down and grabbed his hands to use the counterweight of his body to hold me up. No way was I sitting down on that glorified outhouse bucket. When he realized what I was doing the look switched to disbelief and then outright pleading. "Greta come on! I didn't have any sisters, I don't know how to do this shit. I've got a delicate constitution."

"Oh bullshit, I saw you skullbutt Bobby Creeley in the nuts. You're doing fine, just don't let me fall in or so help me god I'll push you into the urinal." It was dark in the stall and I wasn't happy about the damp noises my shoes were making on the concrete floor. "Lean back, you're letting me down - ew my butt's about to touch, lean!"

"Yeah god forbid I should _let you down."_ He braced his feet against mine and leaned back, keeping me at a steady six inch hover above the seat while I peed in the dark. Andy Burns was going to make some lucky woman a fine husband one day thanks to me. I yanked his arms to pull myself up and zipped my jeans while he frowned at me.

"I owe you tallboy."

"Yeah you do. Stop making me do shit, you're expanding my horizons with skills I don't need."

"Stop whining."

We stumbled back out into the quickly darkening early evening and I was struck - dumbfounded, really - by the absolutely astounding sight of a sky full of twinkling stars where a hazy grey late afternoon had been before. There were more than I'd ever seen in my life; without a blanket of smog and city lights to filter through, they were freakishly bright and clear and I stammered _Whoaaa will you look at that_ before I even realized I was speaking. Andy looked up and nodded.

"We do have a pretty sky, when the clouds break up."

"Wow."

He tapped me on the arm and pointed up to the roof of the outbuilding. "Lets go up, you can see everything from there."

"Everything? Like what everything? I thought we were in the middle of Satan's taint out here, can't be much to see."

"You're unrelentingly gross Greta." He rattled the gutter runoff pipe attached to the side of the building and then crouched down, knitting his fingers together so I could step into his hands. "Use the pipe to steady yourself, I can push you up far enough to grab the gutter."

I had to laugh. We were two grown-ass adults on a shit mission as punishment for acting like adolescents, climbing up on top of a building instead of doing our job, whatever that was. And I suddenly realized, standing there in the softly falling snow under that incredible blanket of stars looking at a six-foot-six skinny babyfaced stoner crouching in the bushes, why I felt so comfortable with this guy. Everything about being with him in a non-sexual setting reminded me of hanging out with my brother. All the running, the bitching back and forth, the climbing fences and going up on roofs and messing around outside at night when we were supposed to be doing something else - it brought back shiny happy memories of my kidhood. Andy was nothing like Ant but I felt safe and happy with him, and that made me willing to plant my foot in his hands and let him heft me up till I could hitch the toe of my other boot in the gap between two cinderblock bricks where the cement had crumbled.

I trusted him not to drop me, just like I'd trusted him to chase Wilson down for me on my first day on the job. I'd had no reason at all to believe he would back me up on anything, but my gut instinct had told me it was fine, he would listen to me, he wouldn't let me down. And he hadn't, not the day he'd run a mile on ice to apprehend a suspect that I couldn't have hoped to catch on my own, and not in the ladies room a few minutes ago holding me in a seatless squat so I could pee without getting the plague, and not now while he was deadlifting me straight up the side of a building so we could shirk our assigned duty to stargaze.

He was good people, to quote my granmama. A little on the white side, but nothing that couldn't be forgiven.

A rustling in the bushes made me lose my concentration and my foot missed the brick, sending me backward while Andy lost his upward thrust. But he was so tall that I ended up simply sitting on his head instead of falling, and when he set me back down on the ground we both spun around to try to locate the source of the crunching leaves.

"Cree I swear to god if that's you I'm going to let Andy bust you in the ballsack with his head again."

There was no answering snicker and Andy moved to get in front of me. I was about to kick him in the back of the knee for thinking I needed protecting, but then I saw what was coming out of the bushes a few yards away. Andy had his hand out, that blissful smile that was so typical of him spreading across his face when he recognized what was coming to visit us.

"Look who it is. Hey Elsie, hey girl."

That damn llama. She had a branch hanging out of her mouth, chomping it like a giant cigar, and when Andy made a kissy sound at her she trotted over to us and pushed her snout into his hand.

"You and Chief, livestock whisperers huh."

"What did Chief do?"

"There was this horse - never mind. Should we tie her to the car and take her in when we go?"

"Naw, I think she's earned her right to be free. The wild life seems to suit her." He petted her on the neck and she whacked him in the side of the head with her long muzzle. "She'll go home when she's ready."

Huh. The unfairness of it all didn't escape me and I would have felt a pout coming on if that big black sky full of glittering stars wasn't sparkling away above me in a way that made it not matter so much. A brainless beast could go home whenever it wanted to and not a second sooner, and nobody was going to make her. And me, a higher evolved - supposedly - life form couldn't get sent home no matter how much I screwed up with the intention of forcing everyone to get so sick of me they put me on the next plane out just to be rid of me.

I would have liked to believe that was why I kept failing so embarrassingly...but the truth was, I wasn't even doing it on purpose.

But that sky up there was kinda making it seem less important every time I looked up.

"That is a nice moon."

Andy was laying beside me on the slanted roof of the outbuilding, staring up at the stars, heavy fog billowing around his face with every breath he exhaled. "Does it look the same as the moon in LA?"

I had to think about that for a second. It didn't - I mean, technically yes it was the same moon, but it was somehow different out here in the big middle of just about nowhere. I squeezed his fingers and sighed. This was the closest I'd felt to really truly _content_ since I'd arrived in Wemightnotbesobad Minimoosebutt.

"Not at all," I finally said, listening to Elsie chewing the bushes below us. "It isn't the same at all."

He made a little sound like he was thinking about it, but didn't say anything. Andy and me, we were getting to that comfortable place where words aren't near as important as just being right there when the other person turns to look.

I was going to miss him when I went home.

"Are we gonna see any of that weird liminal space shit?"

"What time is it?"

"Around, uh - " I fished my phone out of my coat pocket and lit up the home screen. "Eleven fifty-seven."

He yawned and rolled onto his side to snuggle up against me under the mylar emergency blanket we'd pulled out of the trunk of the car. "It usually starts right about now."

"What starts?"

I barely had the words out before a brilliant green stripe cut through the sky directly above us, shimmering with electrical light and giving way to a dreamlike pink mist that pulsed like it had a heartbeat of its own. It was breathtaking and I sat up so fast I nearly slid down the tiles, dropping Andy's head off my shoulder onto the hard roof. "Is that - is that the freaking aurora borealis??"

"Yeah. You don't get to see it in LA, huh?"

"No, we don't get this there. Oh my _god."_

I watched in awe as the green and pink stripes danced across the night sky, shimmering and swirling like brightly colored lightning stuck inside a lava lamp. I was going to have to be careful...Weemightnotbesobadafterall was starting to feel disconcertingly like a place I could fall in like with.

Not love.

But definitely like.

_To be continued..._


	24. Saint Thomas and The Pearl

At seven a.m. on Friday I was dragged unhappily out of my makeshift bed on top of my boxes after having just gotten semi-comfortable, which was possibly the most difficult thing I'd done in my adult life thus far. The knock rattled my front door so hard I felt the plates in the box under me vibrate. I figured it was either Red Hanrahan with a cat'o nine tails or Steve the Taxidermist wanting to stare adoringly at me some more, so when I yanked the door open ready to rip someone a few exit wounds and found Chief standing there with his fist poised to start banging again, I clapped my mouth shut and sort of just stood there in an awkward pause. He was bundled up in his heavy cop coat with the department insignia embroidered on the chest with his name and rank, which was cute in a small-town TV cop series kind of way. They didn't issue those anymore, hadn't in a good decade at least - I figured one of the old ladies in the town had probably made it for him after seeing one on a Columbo rerun. Typical. Chief might have been the favorite of every female in the tri-whatever county, but it was a number that, at the moment, solidly excluded me. I leveled him a glare that made my feelings just about as clear as I could get them.

"Why are you here? I haven't slept yet, I was hoping to get an hour before I gotta get back to the station."

"You aren't answering your phone."

"Yeah because _I'm trying to get an hour before I gotta get back to the station._ I spent all night at Marker 18, remember?"

He leaned against the door frame exactly the same way he always did at the station and settled those hot blue eyes on me, and suddenly I felt about sixty different kinds of naked underneath my unflatteringly baggy sweatpants and stupidly thin tee shirt. A chill gushed in around him from the open door and as it shuddered through me his eyes fell briefly to my chest.

Quite possibly nothing in my entire life had ever felt as baldfaced sexy as that little stolen glance.

I crossed my arms over my boobs as nonchalantly as possible and his gaze came back to my face without the slightest bit of chagrin at having been caught doing a roam. "You don't have to come in till noon. If you answered your phone you'd know that."

"Alright Chief."

A terse little half smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. "We're not on the clock here Morley."

"Fair enough. I'll start calling you Tommy when you start calling me Greta."

"What?"

"You heard me. _Sir."_

The hard flinch that hit his face gave me such a feeling of intense satisfaction that instead of closing the door like I'd intended, I just stood there smiling at him. That arbitrary disagreeableness that seemed to spew out of me every time Chief made me feel things was back with a vengeance and there didn't really seem to be a lot I could do about it. He tried to stare me down, but in the end he looked away with what I'd have to interpret as a half-laugh of obvious frustration as he turned to leave. His eyes fell to something on the ground and the confusion that took the place of the flinch was so profound that I leaned out to see what he was looking at.

Red's gigantic block of moose butter and the thrashed bouquet of roses were still there, poking out from under the bush where I'd kicked them. Chief looked at me with an eyebrow raised, full to overflowing with a whole bunch of questions he had the good grace not to ask. Instead he focused on my face for a second before muttering, "You don't look like a Greta to me."

An unexpected response, but at least he wasn't writing me off as a lost cause as he walked away. That was something, even from where I stood. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Isn't that a Scandinavian name?"

"Oh you gonna start ragging on my name now? _Tommy?"_ He looked momentarily taken aback by my increase in volume and the scratchy irritation in my voice. I should have kept it up, but for some reason my next words came out at a much softer level. "I'm named after a German great grandma if you insist on knowing so much about me."

There went that crazy eyebrow again, shooting up and crinkling his forehead in a way that made my thighs clench together. Damn him, damn his sexy blue eyes, damn the surprisingly good fit of that outdated cop coat and damn that fucking eyebrow in particular. "I know all of two things about you now, Morley. Both unexpected." He turned and took two steps off the porch before I stopped him.

"So who are you named after?"

He stopped, eyeing me with a suspicious sort of amusement as he moved back toward me again.

"Who says I'm named after anyone?"

"I do - nobody names their kid Tommy anymore, that went out with Rugrats in the 90's." He didn't answer, just stood there in my doorway letting all the warm air out of my house like an idiot while I let him like an even bigger idiot. But I didn't want him to leave, I knew that much for certain. My head scrambled for words to put together in whatever order would keep him from turning around and heading back to his Jeep, idling out there at the end of the walkway with Hobo sitting in the passenger seat rubbing his nose all over the window. Insane beast was probably eating the steering wheel and would be starting on the radio knobs next. "So not Saint Thomas?"

"Nope."

"Your brother's named after one of Jesus' buddies and you get stuck with Tommy Pickles. That's just weird because of the two of you, he seems like the one who'd be into cartoons."

"You have a lot of opinions to go with that tendency to never stop talking, don't you?"

"I've got a brain too. Surprised?"

"Morley, do you mind if I - "

"Listen, let's pretend for just a minute that you don't dislike me as much as you do and - "

He frowned and I knew suddenly that we weren't operating on the same wavelength, just like we hadn't been since pretty much the first time I set step into his station. No matter what kind of good intentions either of us might have had, we just kept circling each other like a couple of cage fighters getting ready to get bloody. I had no idea why I was so hellbent on stomping on his foot every time I got near him but it was starting to feel like a deathwish.

"I don't dislike you, Morley. You just - " He shivered and took a step toward me. "Can I come in?"

Why the hell not. I wasn't going to get my hour of sleep now whether he stayed or left. I stepped back out of the way and pulled the door open, gesturing him into the house.

"Look," he said on his way past, stopping a few feet into my livingroom and turning back to me with a steely new expression to replace all the confused, amused, bemused looks that had been dancing across it from the moment I'd first opened the door. "I have a very delicate setup here and you're tipping everything out of the boat."

 _"Delicate setup?_ Did I hear you say that? Just now? In my empty living room in front of God and all my shipping boxes? Chief you have a _drug dealer_ working as an errand boy in your station."

"He's not a drug dealer."

"Oh really? Would you like to know what he offered me the last time I was at his house?"

"I don't want to know about you being at his house, Morley."

There it was again, that little scowl that silently screamed the fact that I was getting under his skin. His jealous streak was putting in an appearance and I had every intention of going clear to the bone if I had to, dragging his patience through every puddle of mud I could steer it toward along the way. A girl needs entertainment, and if I recalled correctly, it was him who'd insisted I needed to develop a hobby.

Andy was the best place to start digging in.

"The guy is everybody's source including yours, don't stand there and lie to me."

"Maybe that's his cover."

"Oh my god you are so full of SHIT! Now you're going to look me straight in the eye and tell me Andy Burns is _undercover?"_

"Maybe."

"Bull SHIT. You're unbelievable. He's not a cop, he can't even spell Wediddleourselves or whatever the hell this place is called." That judgmental eyebrow went up again and I realized what I'd just said - it was hardly a condemnation, but I was on a roll and this wasn't the time to make accessions. "Okay I can't spell it either, but at least I know which side of a car the steering wheel is on. He might be in some halfassed version of witness protection but he is _not_ police."

"You deputized him."

"That was innovation on the go."

We both stopped and looked down somewhere around the vicinity of each other's chests, mildly surprised at our sudden proximity; we'd somehow moved toward each other without realizing it, our heated words drawing us together like the pull of a lit fireplace in a cold cabin. I took a step back, blinking hard, and a second later he did the same. It felt...mildly embarrassing, and maybe just a tiny bit flustering.

Actually it was a lot flustering.

I cleared my throat and tried to remember the subject we were debating. Andy. "You can't be serious about any of this. You're fucking around with me for fun because you're bored and it's seven in the morning and you can't face another day in that goddamn fruitcake factory without trying to drag me down with you."

He just stared at me until I stopped talking, then shook his head. "Naw, I'm not serious."

"You're - wait, you're not serious about him being a cop or about him being undercover?"

"Neither. Both."

We stood there staring at each other for an uncomfortably long time. After what felt like a mortifying lifetime of wordless anxiety, Chief finally cleared his throat and made a move toward the door. "Oh, uh...there was a real nice sunrise this morning, I uh..." He gestured awkwardly toward nothing in particular, sort of alternating between turning toward me and retreating to the exit, like a cat crossing the street, secondguessing itself and doubling back until eventually a car comes around the curve and plasters it. "I sent you a text. To your phone."

I nodded, trying hard not to laugh in frustration. He'd gone from concerned to jealous to annoyed to bashful in such a short space of time that I'd almost lost track of which one we were on now. He met eyes with me for a very brief moment before making that unfocused waving gesture again. There was something of an adorable lost little boy in him and I was horrified to realize that it touched something soft in me. I took a deep breath, confused and irritated and more than just a little bit anxious to get a look at whatever he'd sent me.

"I'll check it then. My phone. For your text."

He took one more quick glance at me before turning to leave, for real this time. I may have stood there for a few minutes after the door closed behind him, shellshocked and thrown all kinds of off-balance and wondering what the hell just happened. I could smell his scent lingering where he'd stood, a stupidly sexy mix of fireplace and flannel and boot leather with maybe a little bit of whatever soap he'd showered with.

It physically hurt.

But that didn't stop me standing there inhaling it long after I heard him drive off.

I hadn't received any text notifications since the last time Chief had texted me, the morning he'd turned on my heater; my phone was new and seemed to be a bit glitchy, yet another irritation in what was shaping up to be a universal plot against my normally level temperament. Hawk had taken my old phone before I left - _department procedure_ he'd said as he held his hand out for me to give it to him. _I'll keep it safe_ he'd whispered in a conspiratorial tone as he slipped it into his pocket. I knew I was under investigation but I'd never heard of having to hand over phones as part of procedure...but I was too numbed by the whole situation to question it, and so I hadn't.

I opened settings and flipped the little toggle button. The phone immediately made a rude noise and started yelling at me in a loud Middle Eastern accent.

"What the hell - "

_"Pttthhhhhhtttttt. You have one new text. Text is a multimedia message."_

I'd never had an electronic device blow raspberries at me before, but in the general scheme of things in my current life situation it made an odd sort of sense. The verbal notification - as well as the accent - were unexpected though...I didn't know what I'd done to activate that particular feature but I was going to have to figure out how to shut it off.

Later though.

I opened the text from Chief and stood there staring it. He'd sent me a picture of the sunrise, caught at that fleeting magical moment when the first rays of light had chased off the dancing green and pink streaks of the aurora. I knew because I'd watched it with Andy from the outhouse roof.

Something about knowing Chief had been watching it at the same time as me felt weirdly...intimate? I wasn't sure if that was the word I was looking for, but it seemed about right. I didn't know where he was while I was at Marker 18 with my new partner in crime, but he was staring up at the same sky, at the same moment, thinking about God only knew what. And then he had taken a picture of it and sent it to me.

Strange how such a small thing can set so many big things in motion.

When I went into the station at noon the only other person there was Kevin, pacing around holding the dispatch mic and humming to himself. I didn't know what to do - there were no instructions left for me and no assignments written on the board, not that there ever had been before, and when Sarah finally came in just after three in the afternoon she shot me a cursory glance and went straight to the break room.

I followed her, either out of boredom or a misguided need to talk to another human being that wasn't pretending to be invisible every time I looked at them.

"Hey."

She looked up, that icy little non-expression holding her face perfectly blank and making me stop where I stood. Sarah Pearl obviously had no intention of being friends with me, and that was okay, I wasn't real big on the whole girl squad thing...but something in me wanted to know why and I was way past being polite enough to leave it be.

"You'd best go find Andy," she said before I could get my next words together. "I suspect he's getting into trouble down by the admin building, he's not supposed to be within five hundred feet of the school zone and I can almost guarantee you that's where he is anyway."

"Why am I his babysitter suddenly? I thought you people were supposed to be keeping an eye on him." She ignored me and snatched a bottle of water out of the little fridge, slamming back what looked like a copious handful of aspirins. "Seems like somebody around here is slacking. Isn't there going to be hell to pay if anyone gives him so much as a sideways look?"

Her eyes went wide, then just as quickly narrowed. "What exactly is it that you think you know about Andy?"

"He's got this entire station snookered, _that's_ exactly what I think I know about Andy. Why does everybody act like he's the spoiled kid of some diplomat? Why does he get away with everything? What's so spec - "

In just about an eyeblink Sarah was up in my face with her finger out, pointing it threateningly at me with a look that rivaled Chief for pure deadly seriousness. "You listen to me Officer Morley and you listen _real_ damn good because I'm only going to say this once. You do not ask questions about Andy, either to him or of him, and if you were smart you'd back up and just wait out your sentence here without getting involved. Are we clear?"

"Geezus you sound just like Chief, do you people have a script you go by? Without getting involved in _what??"_

"Anything." She moved to put a little space between us, but she wasn't far enough away to remove the distinct sensation of threat that was hanging around our little conflict bubble. "Nothing in this town is any of your concern. You're a guest here, you act like one. You use the guest towels and you mind your manners and say thank you and you wait till it's time to leave. And then you _leave."_

I stared at her. She was a formidable presence, to be honest - about four inches taller than me and heavyset, not overweight but definitely on the solid side of sturdy. She looked like she could get Wilson in a headlock with little effort. I was impressed, but not scared.

I tended to be stupid that way.

"I don't think I can do that."

"Then you and I are going to have a problem."

"It seems like we already do."

I don't know what would have happened next if Hobo hadn't come charging down the hallway and tore into the room, snarling and snapping at us. Sarah shoved two fingers in her mouth and whistled so loud my ears popped and the hellhound dropped, laying down on the floor in the doorway with a snarling whimper. She stepped over him on her way out, turning to shoot me one last warning look.

"Mind your business and go home, Morley. I feel like you got a bad rap on that negligence charge and I hate that for you, but this station isn't your personal playground while they sort that shit back in LA. These are real people here."

And then she walked out, leaving me standing there in the break room staring nervously at Hobo, wondering how she knew I had a negligence charge. As far as I was aware my records concerning the accident were sealed until the inquiry and investigation were over.

Interesting.

_To be continued..._


	25. Bring Me A Shrubbery

"Come on around."

A bundled up male with nothing but the top half of his face showing under a furry parka hood was standing at the far right side of the bushes in front of Chief's house, beer in one hand and a hockey stick in the other. The beer hand waved me forward and the stick hand pointed the way, as if just assuming I would follow when he took off walking wasn't enough.

Ted from the donut shop.

I forgot about the weird feelings Chief doused me with for just about the seven seconds it took me to sort the fact that Ted had silver eyes under those dark brows. I'd been trying ever since that first day to sort whether they were actually blue or not, but in the bright glow of the street lamp and the dim filter of moonlight above it, the mystery was demoted to solved status. Definitely silver. I remembered how he'd given me the shivery knickers that first time I saw him and wondered if he might be a viable backup plan for when I undoubtedly crashed and burned with the whole Chief thing.

 _Geezus Morley._ Inherent horniness was something of a hallmark of simply Being Me, but this was rapidly entering the realm of pure unadulterated stupidity. I blamed the cold. The negative attitude toward my chances with the boss, however, were an entire other matter for an entire other time.

"Are you the gatekeeper or the keymaster?"

He looked confused, my vague reference obviously lost on him. Points subtracted - apparently Andy was the only doofus I was willing to go full morosexual for. "There's no gate."

"Of course there isn't. Lead the way."

I could hear the vaguely overbearing sound of men laughing in the near distance and music - obnoxious music, the kind that's seared into your head as the clanging cacophony that accompanies PeeWee Herman dancing poolside - as Ted led me around the side of the little gingerbread house with the godawful teal shutters and all the pointy-leafed holly bushes lining the east windows. Chief had the best security system on the entire block from what I could see and it consisted entirely of horticultural booby traps. Holly bushes are a bitch to get pushed into, I knew from childhood experience playing chase outside my aunt Mimi's with a vicious set of cousins with no morals and an unsettling collective lack of conscience. Anyone trying to get a peek through those panes were going to get eaten alive by carnivorous shrubbery. I considered tossing out a Python reference but wasn't in the mood to have my heart broken again by Ted's undeniably pretty but tragically un-pop-cultured skull.

What was wrong with these people? Was there some kind of an industrial disaster site nearby that was affecting them in some insidiously ridiculous way? A toxic dump trickling heavy lead into the water supply? A simple situation of permanent brain freeze caused by the neverending sub-zero temps and constant snow and ice? A page from basic emergency training came into disturbing focus, the part about what happens to the human brain right before the body freezes to death. Lethargy, drowsiness, apathy toward one's situation, a pervading sense of calm and relaxation that borders on the gentle loopiness of minor intoxication.

That had to be it. There were way too many snoozy brains wandering around this icy burg wearing lovely faces and sexy eyes and an unbothered _ehh whatever_ attitude, and as long as you exempted Red Hanrahan and Bobby Creeley and possibly Sarah Pearl, everyone seemed for the most part harmless in a sleepily sweet sort of way.

Except Chief.

Chief was something of an anomaly, and he was bugging the shit out of me. There was a fierce intellect chugging away behind those unbelievable eyes of his that just didn't fit - not in this town, not in that gorgeous head, and definitely not in his current life situation, what I knew of it. Because Chief was alone when he should have been locked into something deep and abiding or at the very least comfortably long term. He was unattached, and from what I could see, without any discernible immediate prospects. He didn't seem like the sort of male that just wandered around available and yet here he was doing just that, in this weird little village that at first glance strongly resembled a turn of the century mining town devoid of females and pretty much any redeeming graces. He was a forty-something BILF without a ring on his finger or a warm body in his bed.

And that was registering as a couple dozen kinds of wrong.

So many mysteries, so little time...

_Just one year, Morley._

If I got started now I might unearth some great revelation before the exile clock ticked down. But it was Friday night and I was following a cute pastry maker toward the source of a blast of noise and laughter and cursing and the sky was just clear enough for those incredible sparkly stars to shine through. I was entering the den of iniquity that was the Friday night station party. I was inexplicably one of the guys, and though it had been a stumbling, messy, completely embarrassing week of missteps and faceplants to make it this far, I had actually made it.

I'd earned my invite.

The mysteries could hold until Monday.

As we cleared the back corner that opened into a wide back yard with a gigantic crackling bonfire in the dead middle of it, Ted nodded to me with a shy smile and headed for a scuffle that involved multiple hockey sticks and a dogpile of tussling bodies on the ground. I spotted Chief off to one side. He was just standing there, speaking briefly to someone on the bottom of the pile, a bottle of some kind of local label beer in one hand and the other shoved deep into his coat pocket. He looked up and saw me, and when I gave him a halfhearted little wave he raised the bottle toward me. There was a relaxed sort of contented smile on his face that I hadn't seen anywhere near him since the day I'd arrived, and as I stood there admiring the chill aura he was finally exuding and wondering just how much booze had made it possible, Andy popped up in front of me.

"You came!"

"It's a sure thing with you, don't sound so surprised." I reached up and pinched his cheek and he flashed me that bashful grin that had a bad habit of landing me in his bed. _Not tonight, cutiepie._ I had plans that didn't involve falling smashed into the sack with tall goofy Irishmen nurturing minor bondage tendencies. To my left Chief was drinking his beer, his eyes trained carefully on me in a distinctly _I'm not actually looking at you_ sort of way, and behind him I could see Ted the donut guy highsticking the hell out of Cade on the makeshift ice patch beyond the bonfire, completely disinterested in my presence.

It was safe to say my intentions lay patiently in one of their bedrooms, just waiting for me to make some headway in that direction. I sort of hoped it would be Chief's, though I knew there was little chance I would turn down a guided tour to Ted's place in a fit of last ditch frustration...if I could get the oblivious idiot to pay me any attention at all.

Naw, I was lying shamelessly to myself there. I was really hoping - and willing to hold out for - the golden boy with the badge. There's something to be said for authority kinks, and mine was running as wide and deep as ever.

Andy bounced around me like an excited puppy for a few seconds before opening his arms wide until I stepped into what felt comfortably like a big-sibling little-sibling hug, and if that wasn't all sorts of weird I couldn't tell you what was. It was then that I knew Not-Officer Burns and I were destined to be exactly what I'd pegged us for on day one.

Best friends, with a little bit of therapeutic weirdness on the side.

It felt good, it felt right, it felt all kinds of warm and safe and wonderful - and when I stopped laughing at the complete mismatch of our heights as he awkwardly spun me around a couple of times, I opened my eyes to see Chief heading toward the deck with his beer. It wasn't going to take a lot for him to write me off, I knew. I'd started on the wrong foot with him on day one and had just kept on solidly stomping on his boots ever since, and I could tell he was getting tired of it. He didn't know what sort of buddy thing Andy and I had settled into, and he knew as well as I did that I wasn't going to be here long enough to bother trying to get close to...but for however long I did actually end up stuck in Wedrinkalotcuztheresnothingelsetodo, there couldn't possibly be any harm in two grown ass consenting adults spending a little rest-and-rec time together.

If the two grown ass adults in question could get their horses headed in the same direction. Or llamas, as the case was. And I knew for certain that I was one grown ass adult that absolutely consented, but so far Chief didn't seem ready to offer his just yet.

"Hey, what do you know about Chief's wife?"

The expression on Andy's face dropped instantly to a tossup between confusion and mild panic; I dug my chin into the middle of his chest and stared up at him while we danced, waiting for an answer as his eyes darted around nervously. Normally chill Andy was obviously unsettled at this line of questioning and that just made me all the more determined to get an answer out of him.

"He doesn't have one."

"Yeah I know, but the one he _did_ have. What happened to her?"

His face fell hard, like he'd just remembered something terrible and didn't want to have to recount it. But before I could urge him into speaking he shook his head and looked past me like he was searching for Chief. "He's on the deck, he can't hear us." I squeezed him around the middle and urged him to look at me again. "What happened to Mrs Chief?"

"She died. It was a couple of years before I got here, I didn't know her."

"What have you heard?"

"Chief doesn't like anybody to talk about her, Greta."

"He can't hear you."

"I know...it doesn't feel right though."

The poor guy looked so painfully uncomfortable with the subject that I decided immediately to drop it. There were no doubt plenty of informational sources available apart from him - as much as Cree and Sarah seemed to know about my embarrassing backstory, I figured someone around this backwater must be a gossip of epic magnitude. All I had to do was smoke them out, slip them a twenty, join their knitting class, whatever it took...because there was a deep and painful sadness lurking somewhere under the surface of Chief's quiet authority, and I wanted to find out exactly what sort of grief was keeping him decent.

Because I'd seen something distinctly _indecent_ in his eyes, and the only way to unlock it was to get my hands on the key...and then cram it in the lock just as hard and fast as I could.

Andy wandered off to dance alone after I stopped questioning him, sort of - I wasn't sure if it could technically be called _dancing,_ all those arms and legs flailing - and Wilson was there for some reason, flinging himself around dangerously to whatever music was playing in his head. It was hard to tell if they were together or just having seizures in the same general vicinity of each other, but it was sort of an amazing thing to watch...which I did, just long enough to appear unconcerned about Chief's whereabouts before I started looking around for him again. Cree and Kevin were out on the ice beating each other with hockey sticks but paused long enough to acknowledge me as I passed them, offering a quick upward jerk of a shaggy chin from Creeley with a terse "Heya Morley" and a stone blank stare from Kevin. Cade was on his face refusing to give up the puck that Steve the Taxidermist was attempting to retrieve from under him. Someone yelled for me to grab a stick and join in on what looked like a free for all of unrefereed bodychecking, but as alluring of a prospect the idea of legally assaulting my coworkers was on any given day, I had something warmly alcoholic and even more warmly human on my agenda....I'd spotted Chief and he had climbed the steps to the deck after giving me a brief nod toward it, a gesture that I interpreted as an invitation to sit with him and have a drink a safe distance from the festivities.

Safe distance sounded real damn good, and not just because projectiles were flying and sticks were swinging. And so I accepted, wondering just how far he would invite me to follow him before the party ended. He flopped down onto a deck chair and popped open another beer as I navigated the slippery steps.

"Have a seat Morley."

Damn. Not far enough. Or maybe it was just too early. I nodded toward our co-workers, all embroiled in various stages of commando entertainment under a brilliant sparkling night sky like nothing I'd ever seen before.

"Is this some sort of a demon summoning circle?"

"Sit down and see. Something's bound to happen sooner or later."

I didn't know how many of those local label brews he'd had so far, but he seemed just relaxed enough to be mostly human for once. I looked around at my options and settled quickly on the upright deck chair closest to his. "Yes Sir."

The smirk he shot me over the top of his bottle was just about enough to set my ass on fire.

"Are we gonna have this conversation again?"

"Which conversation would that be, Sir?"

His eyes narrowed dangerously, then he waved a hand toward an assortment of bottles on the low side table to my left in a _help yourself_ gesture. I wasn't sure how much I wanted to drink tonight or if I really should even drink at all - my alcohol consumption since arrival had been tipping the scale on the far end of excessive, a little fact I was sure my therapist back in LA wasn't going to be too thrilled about if I ever decided to answer her calls. So far I was solidly off the wagon and careening dangerously toward self destruction, but to be fair, self medicating was just about the best thing I had going for me. Abuse of an uncontrolled substance wasn't even close to the worst sin I'd ever - or _would_ ever - commit. I chose something called Badger Brew and let him take it from my hand to pop it open on the edge of the table.

His fingers bumped mine when he handed it back.

"Tommy - gotta talk to you for a minute."

Chief looked up, and with an internal groan that I hoped couldn't be heard out loud I watched as Saint took the steps three at a time to join us on the deck. He grabbed a bottle from the table and popped the cap with his bare fingers, shooting me a wink before falling back to an unsettlingly worrisome straight face that wasn't standard for him. Chief stared at him for a second before he stood up and set his own bottle down.

"Inside."

And just like that, I was the chick at the party who just got dumped for a prettier dance partner.

Not gonna lie, it was frustrating and more than a little bit embarrassing. But the lowgrade humiliation of being left sitting alone was eased when Andy, bless his long lanky soul, came up onto the deck to retrieve a stray puck that was skittering across the icy floor planks toward my chair. He threw it back into the violent fray out in the yard and headed over to where the booze and I were stationed. Somewhere on the other side of the bonfire I heard the unmistakable nauseating sound of bones hitting ice while inebriated males cursed colorfully. The retrieved puck careened wildly off the front bumper of Chief's Jeep and ricocheted into the holly bushes.

"Unfuckingbelievable. You guys are a bunch of goons." I gave Andy a nudge with my shoulder as he grabbed a bottle and sat down next to me. "You're not suiting up?"

"Naw, I'm too skinny for hockey."

Cree pulled his gloves off and pointed at him as he came up the steps. "Not too skinny to get me a wooby though."

The recently installed dictionary of words I never knew existed flipped open in my head, frantically searching for the definition of what was coming out of Cree's mouth; I'd heard that word before, from Chief, during a particularly cold night soon after my arrival. Andy was kicking open what looked like a cooler and taking something out of it that he tossed from hand to hand like it was burning him. Ah yes...Chief's bedwarmer of choice, only this one did appear to be filled with water instead of electrically inclined like the one he'd recommended to me. Andy kicked the cooler/heater thing shut and threw the bedwarmer to Cree, who promptly shoved it inside his coat and tucked his hands in with it. "You look so dismayed to find out we call our hot water bottles woobies."

"Not as dismayed as I am to discover there's a place on this planet called Moosejaw."

"You reprobates better not be trash talkin' my hometown."

We all looked over at Saint, coming out of the house with Chief behind him. A quick nod to Andy and he was gone, headed off around the front of the house with my Irish savior catching up quickly. Cree watched them for a few seconds, then turned and gave Chief a quick glance that I'm sure was meant to look like nothing to me except a brief acknowledgement, if I was meant to see it at all...but even though detective work wasn't in my short list of impressively mastered job skills, I knew a meaningful wordless exchange when I saw one. Whatever was said inside the house hadn't taken more than two minutes to be laid out, but the furrow it put between Chief's brows made it clear each word of that brief exchange was paying its own way.

And Cree knew what it was about.

I watched the big lout toss his wooby back into the heat box and thought about just making my goodbyes for the evening. Whatever whack idea I had about myself and the Chief obviously wasn't on the cosmic agenda for tonight, and now there was _this_ weirdness going on, whatever it was. Andy and Saint were the two closest things I had to buddies in this place and they were both gone, buggered off to god knew where. Chief was looking more and more unattainable, what with that deep cranky looking crease taking up real estate between his eyes. Cree, weak companionship option that he was, was headed off back to the bonfire yelling at Wilson to put his big girl panties on and stop whining about getting highsticked in the skull.

And it was starting to snow.

Insult to injury, with a dash of left jab to the temple.

I stood up and slugged back what was left of my Badger Brew. Better to take my warm little buzz and go home and curl up on my boxes before I had to own up to the fact that Tommy Davis just didn't see anything in me that inspired any degree of interest. And it would be just about my luck that it would start blizzarding and I'd lose my orientation walking home and end up having to have my pathetic ass rescued halfway down the street.

It would be even more my luck that Chief would be doing the rescuing.

No thanks. I gave him a halfhearted salute and turned to take my one and only shot at a graceful exit.

And then the strangest thing happened, and I'd be hard pressed to put a finger on it if somebody asked me to speculate where it started or define what kicked it off. All I know is those weird green streaks were starting to swirl around in the sky to the north as Chief flopped back down into his half reclined deck chair and reached out to touch the side of my hand with a fingertip. I probably looked stupidly confused when I turned around, but that didn't stop him from tilting his head in a _come here_ sort of way that sent a gut clench clear up to my diaphragm. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, but the combination of the surprisingly potent booze and the crackling fire and the chilly night air worked together to do something sinister to my libido, and before I realized it I was sliding down into his lap.

His arms came up around me and I settled in against his chest.

"You're not half uncomfortable, for a superior officer."

"Hmm."

Somewhere the boozy muffled saxophone of Tequila by The Champs played through the dark as I shifted around until I was kneeling over Chief's lap on my knees. He sat there with his eyes locked to mine as I reached up and held his head still to kiss him. He broke into the middle of it with a raspy whisper. "Rub yourself on me Morley."

"Hmm?"

"Lemme feel how wet you are."

I laughed. He was obviously far gone into all those empty bottles of demon brew, and from the warm wobbly feeling in my own head I knew he was probably feeling pretty loose right about then. "I'm wearing longjohns under these jeans, the only way you're feeling anything wet is if I piss myself."

"Then do that."

"Okay, if you're a kinky fucker I'm gonna need to know ahead of time - "

_"Chief."_

The universe giveth and the universe taketh away. I groaned the groan of the slowly dying and looked up to see Sarah Pearl standing in the back doorway in all her stoic levelheaded disapproval, but that was no glare of irritation on her face this time - it was pure rushed necessity, and the academy graduate in me stood to attention even though she wasn't my superior officer. I slid over off Chief's stomach and righted myself the best I could.

Chief cleared his throat and stood up with a slight wobble.

"What's up?"

"Aside from the pair of you? This seems almost petty."

Chief moved past her into the house without a backward glance, taking the folded up papers from her hand on his way. She looked over at me with what I was shocked to be able to call an apologetic shrug of sorts, silently mouthing _Sorry_ at me as she turned to follow Chief into the house.

The door shut behind them with a rattly little click, and just like that and for the second time in one night, I was standing alone on the icy deck while the snow started falling faster and heavier, surprised as hell to realize that Chief was right. I was definitely feeling a bit wet, and it wasn't from the cartoonishly huge snowflakes melting on my face.

_To be continued..._


	26. The Fugitive

I don't feel the least bit of shame in admitting that I went to Andy's place later that night, after the vicious bite of the Badger Brew wore off and I realized that staring at my gigantic still-full packing boxes wasn't how I wanted to spent the rest of my evening. It wasn't that I was suffering from residual horniness, though the pervasive tickle I felt in my gut - and lower - every time I thought about settling in on Chief's stomach for that brief little kiss definitely _could_ have been a determining factor in me grabbing my coat and yanking my boots on again. I toyed very briefly with the idea of trotting back down to Chief's house, but...he hadn't trotted up to mine, and that said as much as I needed to know.

Truth be told though, I really just wanted to be with somebody I liked and felt comfortable with, sex not required. Somebody that I knew had booze on the shelf and a bag of illicit substance laying out where any old cop wandering by could confiscate it for nefarious purposes. A known willingness to be the little spoon till morning wasn't hurting his position in the running either.

But Andy wasn't there, and the twinge of jealousy I felt when it occurred to me that he might be with someone else was just a little bit embarrassing.

I let myself in anyway. There was one thing to be said for small towns in the snowy midwest - if a crime was going to be committed there was a good chance you knew who did it and could just go punch the perp in the face and retrieve your stuff the next morning. Which is exactly what I thought Andy was going to have to do when I heard someone coming in the back door while I was sitting on his couch feeling sorry for my lame self.

"Okay you better be a tall loopy Irishman with a pair of handcuffs or I'm going to draw my sidearm, and trust me when I say I'm feeling just edgy enough to shoot you in the ass."

The intruder stopped in the kitchen doorway, behind me where I couldn't see them, and the next thing I heard was probably the last voice in the _world_ that I wanted to hear while I was trespassing in Andy Burns's house.

"Well I've got handcuffs, can't help you on the rest of it though. And I didn't issue you a sidearm so I'm gonna assume it's safe to do what I'm here to do."

I shot up off the sofa and spun around, nearly falling over the coffee table before I found my footing and stood to alert. "Sir. What are you - ?"

"I could ask the same of you."

Chief was standing there with a half bemused look on his face, but that one honest eyebrow of his was dipped in an irritated disapproval that I was getting far too familiar with. I knew what this looked like from where he stood. There was only one reason why I would be waiting in Andy's house late at night...well, two, but if I wanted an illicit smoke I could have just done that and left already. It wasn't like he hid his stuff.

"I...you left the party. The others were playing hockey so I went home."

He stared at me like he didn't believe a word that was coming out of my mouth. And then he shook his head and pushed off from the doorway to head down the hall toward Andy's bedroom. “Get an electric blanket Morley, geezus.”

"First you tell me to get a hobby, now you're dictating my bedding. You're a bossy one. And don't you mean _wooby?"_

"Oh yeah, you should get a bed first, I forgot," he sassed over his shoulder at me. "You still sleeping on your boxes?"

"I don't see how that's any of your concern, _Sir."_

"It's not. I just like to see you get defensive." He disappeared into the bedroom for a second and reemerged carrying that little baby blanket that was always on Andy's bed, the little quilt with the brown polkadots on one side and white on the other. He had it bunched up in his hand and stopped at the end of the hallway to fire off a parting shot at me. "He won't be back here tonight so you should go sleep in his bed, get warm, but be out of here before sunup or Saint might shoot you on sight."

"Saint is armed now? And why the hell would he shoot me and why will he be coming in _here_ at sunup? Where's Andy?"

"Just - do whatever you're gonna do, Morley. You've made it clear you have an issue with following orders from me so I'm just going to say this as some guy you know and not your superior officer, maybe you'll listen that way." He shoved the little blanket toward me to stress his point. "You make me or anyone else in this department nervous and I'll send you to Parker out in Ondijwe. Not back to LA, you clear on this? You fuck up here and you go someplace worse, and if you think Weemeetwa is bad - "

"What is the deal with that blanket?"

He stopped mid-rant, mouth open, and looked down at the little blanket in his hand. There seemed to be an internal argument going on inside him about whether or not to answer me, so I pushed a little harder. Anything was better than the direction this conversation was currently taking. "That thing's always on his bed, he cuddles it for fucks sake. He's an adult, it's...weird. Strangely sweet but a little odd."

He looked up at me and I could see all the desire to assert his authority had gone out of him, replaced with - what, I couldn't really tell. Sadness? Apprehension? It was impossible to read him in that short little moment when he fell silent and finally sighed, reaching up to drag a hand through his hair, making those wavy golden curls stand up a little higher as he brought his eyes back around to me with a defeated sort of finality.

God I wanted to tug on them in the throes of something filthy and perverted.

"It was his kid brother's, okay? That's all you need to know. Don't ask him about it, Morley. I mean it, just - don't."

Filthy and perverted cooled down real damn quick.

"You're taking it to him, aren't you. He's sleeping somewhere else and he couldn't rest without it. Right?" He started to move toward the door at the back of the kitchen but I wasn't about to let him leave just yet. "Where is he, Chief? He didn't bag some girl at a bar, he wouldn't need his snuggly for that and he wouldn't call you to bring it to him. Saint whisked him out of the party pretty damn fast after he talked to you. I doubt they're banging each other so where did they go?"

"Stop, Morley."

"I'm stuck in this damn place for a whole year Chief, throw me a frickin' bone here - I might not be a detective but I can tell when something whack is going on and _something whack is going on_. I'm going to figure it out sooner or later because you've made it clear I've got all the time in the world and there is _nothing_ to do at Marker 18!!"

_"YOU GODDAMN FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER. YOU RIDICULOUS SHITHEAD. YOU FUCKING TWAT HEADED - "_

Chief and I both stopped and stared at each other.

"Excuse me?"

"God. Sorry, that's my phone."

_" - TAKE IT IN THE EAR JIZZSOUP. NOSTRILFUCKING CLITBRAINED COCKSUCKING -_

"Hell of a ringtone you've got there."

_"CHRONIC MASTURBATOR - "_

I scrambled to yank it out of my pocket, fumbling so hard I nearly dropped it. "It does that, I don't know why."

_" - PUSSYLICKING SNOT-FOR-LUBE ASSBANDIT - "_

Chief looked like he was about to bust. I finally got my screen unlocked while he stood there trying hard not to laugh and started pushing buttons in a desperate attempt to shut it off before it got any more creative. "Okay excuse me for a sec would you please?"

"Morley?"

"Yeah I'm trying to shut it off, just a minute."

"Why is your phone insulting your bra size?"

"I'm pretty sure it was Creeley, Sir. Sorry. I think he took it while we were on Marker 18 duty and he turned on the thing that reads your texts out loud. Needless to say someone's been texting me a lot since then."

"Can't you turn it off?"

"I don't know how." I held up a finger. "Just one second."

_" - EMBARRASSMENT TO YOUR MOTHER AND YOUR MOTHER'S MOTHER AND YOUR MOTHER'S MOTHER'S MOTHER BUT NOT YOUR FATHER BECAUSE NO ONE KNOWS WHO THE HELL HE IS - "_

In a fit of desperation I just hit the down volume button and we stood there in painful silence listening to the insult fade mid-curse until finally, blessedly, we couldn't hear it anymore. Goddamn Creeley. Chief made a little snuffling sound caught somewhere between a highly amused chuckle and an annoyed groan and took a deep breath - it was obvious he was about to say something either very profound or very final, and I held my own breath waiting for it.

"The DFP's been rumbling, Morley. That's why you keep seeing us deploy."

Wha- _what?_ I'd never heard that particular acronym, but nothing in Chief's expression even slightly resembled a man having a bit of fun. He just looked...dead serious. "They've pretty much forgotten about us so we have someone monitoring them, and when they move so do we."

...what??

"Wait a second - DFP? Deploy? What?? What the hell are you even talking about?"

"DFP. The Department of Fugitive Protection. You know this, right?"

"No I don't know this, you're making it up. There's no such department - "

"There is, Morley. Except they don't report to us and we don't seem to merit an overabundance of their concern, probably because Andy's been out here nearly a decade without any incident - "

"Andy is a fugitive?!"

"Yeah, Andy's a fugitive. He's not officially in witness protection because the people he needs protecting from have their own people inside that organization. They'd know where he is and he would have been taken out before he got off the bus at the end of town. So he's registered with the DFP but they seem to have forgotten about him."

"Wait - "

"Listen to me Morley. I thought you might be here for reasons other than waiting out that departmental review. When they told me you were coming I was ready to assume you were here for Andy. And then the first fucking thing you did was zero in on him on day one and you've been glued at the crotch to him ever since, so what the hell else was I supposed to think?"

My head flung itself straight to that _glued at the crotch_ bit before the rest of it hit me, but when it did it hit me hard and solid, square in the face. "Wait, you thought I was working for whoever is after him?"

"Yeah, I did. He keeps insisting you're not but you and I both know he's got a tendency to trust a bit blindly. So we've all been watching you, because he seems to have..." He paused, seemingly struggling to get the next words out like they tasted bad. _"Bonded_ with you."

"Wait - "

"I'm not saying any more on it, Morley."

"Hold on - you've had a discussion with him about me being here to bump him off?"

"Morley - "

"And he talked you out of it? What the hell is wrong with him, I could have offed him in his sleep at least three times already!"

Chief cringed, hard. I knew he had a heavy aversion to hearing how often I frequented Andy's bed, but I was feeling pretty sick suddenly about how easy it would have been to put a gun to the guy's head and just...god, did he trust me _that_ much?

"Listen Morley, go home, don't go home, I don't care. Just...watch yourself. Sarah's about ready to hit the button on one of the last-ditch protocols and trust me when I say you don't want that to happen."

_"Wait a second!"_

He kept trying to head for the door, but he didn't seem all that dedicated to leaving even though the pained scowl on his face was heavily implying otherwise. "What."

"Last ditch protocol, what the hell is that? Because in my department it's when you make the decision to turn your vehicle into a deadly weapon and brace yourself for impact."

"Sounds about right, yeah."

Holy shit. "You guys have a last ditch protocol in place for _Andy??"_

Chief finally made a determined move toward the door. "Goodnight Morley."

_"What is he?!?"_

In the space of a blink he turned back around and was up in my face, so close I could feel his breath on my skin. "Listen to me Officer Morley. This may all look like a fun little mystery to you but every last one of these people know what they have to do and they're all willing to do it. So don't do anything that makes any of them nervous because I'll tell you right now, I've already had to pull the reins on Cree twice. _You are not trusted here."_

I stared up at him, not moving, not backing up, not blinking - I think he expected me to because he seemed surprised that I was still there when he finished his little tirade and caught his breath, and when I still didn't move away he dropped his eyes down to my lips for the briefest of seconds. In the middle of all _that_ I couldn't help the completely ludicrous thought that flitted through my head, standing there staring down this beautiful specimen of maleness, wondering if he was thinking about that tiny little kiss we'd started on the deck earlier that night.

His breathing shifted and he blinked hard. 

"Goodnight Morley."

"Chief, wait - "

_"Tabernac."_

"Yeah I Googled that by the way, I know what you're saying Mister Lapsed Catholic."

"Morley I have somewhere to be - "

"I know, you're taking Andy his blanket, at some safe house somewhere, because DFP did something that made you nervous. I just want to ask you something."

"You have ten seconds."

I didn't even take the deep breath that my lungs were telling me I desperately needed. "At the...powwow, whatever that thing was tonight..."

I swear to god that man had the poor manners to actually _blush_.

"Yeah. I, uh...I had a bit to drink. Sorry."

"Why are you apologizing? I'm a big girl, don't you think I can decide whether or not I want to sit on a man's lap?"

"Morley - "

"What? You regret showing me a little bit of the other side of Tommy Davis?"

His head came up and that twitchy little edge of a grin started to tilt up the corner of his mouth. "So you _can_ actually say my name."

"Oh I can do a lot of things way more interesting than that. Sir."

He stared down at the blanket in his hand for a long time, like he was weighing the very likely odds of me screwing him over somehow, and then he cast a pointed glance back toward Andy's bedroom. "I don't share, Greta. I don't know what you LA people get up to but we're a little far removed from it out here."

"You crack me up. 'What we LA people get up to'?...like the entire city is just Jabba's palace or something?" I punched him in the shoulder but he wasn't in the mood to look at me anymore. I kind of felt bad for him, but his attitude was pissing me off enough to cancel it out. "Look, I don't know what you're on about with all this _I don't share_ shit. Are you saying you want me for yourself? Because let me tell you, Andy is good enough in the sack to keep me coming back unless you've got something better to offer me on a consistent basis."

It had the desired effect. Chief got into a righteous huff and skulked off to the other side of the room, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking every bit the recalcitrant eleven year old he was acting like.

"I don't want you sleeping with Andy. I don't want you sleeping with anyone."

"Because you don't trust me not to be some interdepartmental spy sent here to assassinate Andy Burns for being a weird Irishman?"

"Don't even joke about it Morley."

"It seems like a joke from where I'm standing. I mean...Andy?" I don't know at what point I moved closer to him, but he wasn't moving away and emboldened by his failure to retreat, I took another step. "But we've moved on from that subject, haven't we? We were discussing you being a greedy little boy. _Sir."_

I reached up and laid my hand on his shoulder.

"Morley - "

"You're backsliding, you called me Greta a minute ago."

He sighed. _"Greta_ \- I dunno what I was thinking, I get a little...loose...when I drink. But I meant what I said, I don't share."

"Okay then, lure me into your bed and keep me there."

The stare he leveled on me was boneshaking and I may have trembled a little. He noticed, and his breathing changed slightly. "This isn't appropriate, Morley. I'm your boss."

"Only for a year. And you're backsliding again."

"You've been here for one damn week and you've caused me more problems in these five days than Andy's caused in seven years."

I don't handle frustration well, and right about then I was starting to reach epic levels of it. Epic, spine stiffening, eye narrowing levels. "Look, Chief...I'm sorry I've upset your quiet little operation here, whatever it is, but the fact is that I'm here. I'd rather be literally anywhere else and I'm sure that's where you'd rather I be too, but for now and the immediate future we're stuck with each other. Why not...just...make the best of it?"

He was staring at the little blanket again, where he'd dropped it over the back of the couch during his first retreat. And then with the tired resignation of a man who knows duty will always come before pleasure, he snatched it up and turned toward the door, away from me. "I have to go."

"Would you consider coming back?"

The sheer height that eyebrow was capable of reaching will forever be the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. He didn't seem to have any words to accompany it, so I soldiered on. "You said Andy won't be back tonight...shame to let that big warm bed go to waste."

"You're something, Morley. Jesus Christ."

"What?"

"I was just in there, it's still unmade!"

"For your information I wasn't here last night, I was _at Marker 18_ on top of an outhouse and then what little sleep I got after that was on top of my boxes!"

"I don't care Morley, you're an adult. Where you sleep is your business."

The conversational whiplash was setting in, but at least this time we were dancing around the original subject without any extemporaneous bullshit muddying the puddle. Switching madly from waltz to macarena, but still on the same general dancefloor. "You're so full of shit your eyes are going to turn brown if you're not careful. And that'd be a real shame because they're such a pretty shade of blue."

"Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"Flirting with me."

He wasn't looking away anymore, and he wasn't moving toward the door, and he wasn't twisting and whiteknuckling that crazy little baby blanket like he'd been from the moment I first started getting on his nerves. That had to be something, and though I didn't know what it meant exactly, a little more pushing felt like a safe enough option. I closed the space between us and stood so close to him that I had to look up to see his face, changing my tone to let him know I was done antagonizing him. "You don't like being flirted with?"

"Nope."

"You like to get straight to business, don't you."

"Yep."

"Then by all means, let's do that."

Chief's lips were warm and soft, and unlike the harsh beer taste they'd had at the party, this time the slightly bitter but nonetheless comforting taste of black coffee - and maybe a touch of whiskey - clung warmly to them.

And so did I.

His arms came up around me and I could feel that baby blanket rubbing against my back, still clutched in his hand. I wanted to tell him to drop it, to leave Andy and his kid brother and everything having to do with either of them out of this, but there was no way in hell I was going to break this moment with an utterance of any name other than his.

"Tommy - "

The softly murmured _Hmm?_ against my mouth was enough to silence me. Whatever I was going to say was forgotten in the breathless rush of our bodies zeroing in on each other, pelvises crashing together in that blind little grind that hips and legs do when the brain has shorted out and the rest is operating on the pure adrenaline soaked instinct to get so close to another body that they stop being separate entities.

God bless that instinct. God bless it to hell and back. It was maybe the one saving grace of this place, the fact that no matter how cold it was, how snowy and icy and ridiculously, stupidly _frigid_ the entire damn place was, two bodies could rub up against each other and find warmth.

Chief parted his lips and moved them up the side of my face, leaving a heated damp trail across my cheek to where my ear met my jaw. His breath shivered across that delicate little fold inside it and I heard him whisper, so quietly that it barely registered even at that nonexistent distance, some tortured version of my name.

It was more of a moan than a word. And _god_ if that wasn't the sexiest thing that man could have done to me...I honestly don't know if anything could top it. Except maybe doing it while he was buried deep inside me, bellybutton to bellybutton, naked and sweaty with those fiery blue eyes of his locked hard to mine.

"Go get in his bed."

Wha - ?

He backed up from me and I swayed a little despite still being in his arms. "Are you coming with me?"

That little shake of his head was enough to make me groan so hard in sheer frustration that Wilson probably heard it two blocks over. No doubt his next self help class would cover dealing with rejection gracefully, but I was feeling anything but grace as Chief tucked Andy's blanket into the front of his coat and looked away. There was a hard clench to his jaw that made it clear his mind was made up...he had someplace to be and it didn't involve Not Officer Burns's bedroom, whether I was in it or not.

"It's warm and you're already here, just...go sleep in there, and for fucks sake get yourself a bed soon. Felton's on Main. Tell him I sent you."

"Chief - "

He raised a hand, already at the door and reaching for the knob. It was just a digit shy of The Finger of Authority, but it was enough.

"Goodnight Morley."

I woke up to the sound of someone coming into the bedroom just as morning was starting to make its shy presence known. They didn't turn the light on, but I knew before they got their shoes off that it wasn't Chief. Andy had a loping, heavy sort of pigeontoed walk that creaked the floorboards and I could hear every step he took as he came over to the bed and stopped long enough to pull his jeans off and tug on a pair of sweatpants.

He curled up to me, that big long body wrapping around me in a warm cocoon of unconditional affection that made me feel so damn guilty I could barely stand myself. All I had ever really wanted from Andy was some physical gratification and here he was doing the puppydog thing again, seeking something I obviously couldn't give him. Something in him craved comforting, mothering, a tenderness that just wasn't built into me despite me apparently being mom-shaped enough to trigger it in him. He wasn't making any move to seduce me. He was simply getting as close to me as he could, nuzzling his scratchy bearded cheek into the side of my neck while his gigantic hands found their way up under my shirt to push into the warm spot between my breasts.

He was a big little boy, too overgrown to cuddle comfortably but still trying every chance he got. And for some reason he never seemed able to read my lack of maternal instinct as anything that should keep him away.

And there I was, laying there all stiff and unyielding, trying to stay immune to his clumsy charm.

An utter fail.

I gave up. Trying to convince this guy I wasn't the mothering type had been a colossal crash and burn from the first time we'd curled up in bed together without the blinding numbness of alcohol to drive the softness out of us. I looped my arms around his neck and pushed my fingers into his tangled curly hair, closing my eyes when I heard the deep contented sigh whisper from his lips.

I couldn't offer him a lot by way of nurturing. But I could hold him and let him hold me, for however long he felt like he wanted it. I reached down for the little blanket that he'd dropped on the foot of the bed and tucked it between us.

_Look at you now, Greta._

Geezus.

_To be continued..._


	27. You Incendiary Me

The weekend went by without incident, which was...astounding, to be honest. My first quiet hours since arriving in this unbelievable place. Andy and I stole his truck out of impound behind the station to pick up my bed from Felton's where a weathered old man gave me a really good deal on a twin size - the only damn bed he had in stock, which I felt like Chief was probably very well aware of - and when we were sneaking the truck back into the impound lot something odd happened. My phone rang, which in itself wasn't unusual, but the look on Andy's face when Hawk's picture came up on my screen had all kinds of out of the ordinary on it.

"Is that your boss in LA?"

"Yeah, hang on."

He was frowning, but I had Hawk on the line and I hadn't spoken to him in days...as much as I would have loved to deny it, I sort of missed the crusty old Captain. The fact that he likely had information on my case was enough to make me throw out a finger to silence my partner in larceny.

"Greta?"

"Yeah, hi, what's up?" It was a pretty sure bet he could hear the excitement in my voice and I turned my back to Andy to avoid the bemused look on his face.

"Something has to be up for me to call my best girl?"

That merited a hard cringe; Hawk loved to use outdated terms when it came to our relationship, an embarrassing habit that I often thought might be intended solely to irritate me. I turned away from Andy again; he was stepping around me in a circle, not even being covert about how hard he was trying to listen. "I hope you've got news on my reprieve, old man. I'm afraid I'm not cut out for small town life."

"Eh, you'll make it Greta. You're a survivor."

That made me cringe even harder than the prohibition-era romantic terminology. Being the only one to walk away from the crash - _walk_ being very loosely relative in this case - was going to be a sore spot for me for a very long time, probably for the rest of my life, and Hawk had never caught onto the fact that survivor's guilt was one hell of a real thing for me. I ignored his last sentence and swatted at Andy, who was following me around while I paced, looking over my shoulder at my phone and sticking so close that I kept bumping into him. "Yeah, well I'm freezing my ass off out here and the internet sucks. And I don't really think the department likes me very much."

Andy stopped moving around and stared at me, scowling and shaking his head. "No Greta, that's not - "

Hawk went silent on the line for a few seconds. "Who is that?"

"Nobody. A friend. We work together."

"Sounds Irish."

"Yeah, he is. Listen, please tell me you've got news on the inquiry?"

"What's an Irishman doing in Minnesota?"

"Is that where I am? I dunno, he was here when I got here. Best person they got though." I gave Andy a punch in the shoulder and he flashed me that broad smile of his. "They _are_ actually proceeding on the inquiry, right? I mean they're getting it done? Because I'm not going to last long here, I'll tell you that right now."

The desperation in my voice was audible even to me.

"Greta, sweetheart, listen to me. Your best bet right now is to just sit tight and get comfortable. I told you a year and I meant a year. An officer died, I can't just wave my hand and sign something and have it be over with."

Andy flinched at the same time I did, still listening in spite of me trying to shoo him away. The sympathy in his eyes was gutwrenching and suddenly the only thing I wanted was to get off the phone. This conversation wasn't helping me.

"Okay, I'm sorry. Thanks Hawk. I'll talk to you later, okay? I'm currently returning a stolen vehicle to impound and my partner needs me." I winked at Andy. "We kinda need to hurry up and get out of here since we're the ones who stole it."

"What?! Greta you're supposed to be behaving yourself out there, please tell me you're not setting the place on fire."

"Not yet."

"It wasn't exactly easy to get you this reassignment. The Commissioner wanted to put you out to pasture."

Andy had wandered over to the fence to wave at Cade, who was sitting on the back steps of the station drinking a cup of coffee from that ever-present red plaid Thermos. He waved back. I wondered if he'd been sitting there the whole time, watching us steal the truck and bring it back.

"I know, Hawk. I appreciate what you did, I really do. It's just - " I let my sentence drift off to nothing, because this was Hawk and he was right as always, and I was just feeling petulant and put upon. It wasn't a good look on me.

"So...the Irish guy is your partner?" Hawk had that curious hitch to his voice, the one I had heard a million times, the one that he used during questionings to fool the suspect into thinking they were just having a conversation when actually that steel trap mind of his was extracting exactly what he needed. He was insidious that way. But it always worked.

"Why are you so fascinated with Andy? Listen, I really do have to go, but can you call me again later? We can talk. You know... _talk."_

"Wait, I want to hear about your new partner."

"Later okay, I gotta go."

There was a long pause, I don't really know what for - Hawk wasn't going to sign off with a term of endearment, he wasn't going to say anything along the lines of _Okay love you honey, bye_. Because that wasn't us. We weren't like that. We weren't even a couple, never really had been...we were more of a convenience, and I didn't feel the least bit guilty when I looked up and saw my frequent new bedpartner staring at me nervously.

"Okay, we'll talk later. Mind yourself, Greta."

"I will."

I reached out and poked Andy in the stomach as I hung up. But that wasn't a sheepish look on his face - he wasn't feeling squicked about standing there listening while I talked to my lover back home. He seemed genuinely _worried._

"You okay cutiepie?"

"You sleep with your boss?"

"Uh, yeah. I guess I sort of have a bad habit of that, don't I."

 _"That_ guy." He pointed at my phone. _"That_ guy's your boss. You're with _him."_

"Yes Andy, that is Hawk, he is my boss, and god help me yes I occasionally bump nasties with him when we're bored but no, we're not _together._ Can we get out of here before Cade arrests us? Because I really don't need a grand larceny charge tacked onto my current not-so-stellar record and he is _definitely_ watching us."

"It's only grand larceny if you keep it. It drops to first degree theft of property if you bring it back."

"What about if it's yours to begin with?"

He thought about it for a second, looking me straight in the eyes like he was trying to figure out how much he wanted to say - and it was right then that it occurred to me I was standing behind the station house with a wanted fugitive. _This_ guy. This freakishly tall, outstandingly sweet, ridiculously adorable dork with his long curly hair blowing across his oddly cute face in the chilly breeze, billowing icy fog from his mouth while stray snowflakes settled in his ginger beard. _This_ guy had been involved in something big, something dangerous, something outside the law that I was sworn to protect, and here I was dragging the impound fence shut after stealing a car with him.

_There's only one person in here that's killed someone and it's not either of you._

"It's not mine, it belongs to the city. They assigned it to me when I got here."

I draped the chain around the gatepost - there was no lock, which hadn't surprised me in the least - and did my level best to pretend I wasn't overly interested in what he was saying. "Yeah? What brought you here of all places? The frozen tundra remind you of the moors or something?"

"I'm from the hills." He shrugged and handed me the keys to Unit Two as we turned to head back to the front lot under Cade's watchful gaze. "I got sent here."

There was something faraway and sad in his voice that matched the distant look in his eyes. I knew it then. Andy Burns was more than he seemed, he just didn't seem to realize it himself. I reached out and rubbed his arm, a little bit sad when he flinched like he'd expected me to punch him.

"Yeah, me too cutiepie." The snow was starting to swirl around us, that weird little vortex thing the wind seemed to like doing in this surreal place, and the fugitive - whoever he was, whatever he was - turned his face up to look at the sky with a wonder that was almost childlike.

"You and me are kinda the same, Greta."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I just tripped him and dodged the snowball he hurled back at me.

"Yeah, that's us tallboy. Wequeefwell's benchwarmer division. You're too skinny to be a cop and I'm not good at anything except driving fast."

He nodded, that broad impish smile spreading across his face.

"Somebody's gonna need our skills one day. And then we're gonna shine."

Something in the way he said it made me believe him.

On Monday morning I was barely inside the station when Chief came charging out of his office, pulling on his coat and pointing The Finger of Authority at me and Andy. "Don't get comfortable, Wilson's at Nimbakade and Noozhis with an incendiary device."

"An incendiary device? What kind? And he's _where??"_

"Cree you head the back way, be ready to defuse once she has his stupid ass."

"What the hell is wrong with him? And wait - why are me and Andy doing this?"

"Andy isn't, he's going to be relay. Wilson'll listen to you, he likes you. And if not...Andy can chase him down."

The apocalyptic look on Andy's face actually made me feel bad for him. "Ah man Chief," he whined, banging the back of his head into the doorframe in frustration, "Not again, I don't have the stamina for this shit. I ate donuts for breakfast!" But Chief was grinning where Andy couldn't see him, and it was with a little shiver of arousal that I realized he was tossing me a sly little wink from the side.

"I'm kidding, you stay in the car on the radio. You do _not_ \- I repeat you _do not_ get out of the car, do you understand me? And wear the vest."

Cree shot me a smug grin of his own as he moved past me to get his coat from the rack by the door. "You let that kid outta the car I'mma tell Chief."

"Nice skinsuit Creeley, do you donate your shaved fur to that organization that makes Wookiee costumes for needy Star Wars fans?"

"Heh."

We all turned to look at Kevin; he had come into the room without anyone noticing him and was standing less than five feet from me and Cree, holding the dispatch mic and not blinking. All evidence was beginning to indicate the guy really was invisible, and I was starting to be a believer.

Chief clapped his hands and we all shifted into work mode.

"Let's get going people. And don't let Andy puke in the car."

We were just rolling up on the intersection of Nimblefoot and Nosehole - or the Ojibby equivalent, I couldn't even say it in my head much less out loud - when we all but ran over Wilson. The dumbass just stepped out from one of those stupid little side alleys that this town seemed to be peppered with and froze square in the center of my headlights, and since the weather gods had graced us with a fresh sheet of glass-slick ice in the early hours of the morning, no amount of quick braking was going to keep me from hitting him with the huge and unstoppable tank that was Unit Two.

Which is exactly what I did. Fortunately we were moving slow and he sort of just...flopped over onto the hood. Andy and I sat there staring at him for a long few seconds.

"Geezus Christ Greta you hit Wilson!"

"Relax, we were barely sliding. He's probably fine."

Wilson rolled over on the hood and plastered his face to the windshield directly in front of me. "You ran over me you crazy cop bitch!!"

"See? What'd I tell you, he's fine."

Kevin's voice interrupted over the radio, droning in that unsettling monotone while Wilson stood up and started jumping on the hood of the car, cursing me and threatening to hand my ass and the respective asses of everyone in the department to his uncle the attorney. _"Unit Three, did you just run over Wilson?"_

"Stop eavesdropping on me Kevin. This is Unit _Two_ and no I didn't run over him, he walked out in front of me and I...bumped him. He's fine."

There was a long pause while we sat there watching Wilson throw his little temper tantrum, then Kevin came back. _"Chief wants to know if Andy has his vest on."_

"Yes Andy has his vest on." I reached over and slapped Andy on the arm, tucking the handset into the front of my coat so Kevin couldn't hear me. "Get that damn vest on."

_"Chief says make contact with Cree and then bring Wilson in."_

Wilson knelt down where I could see his face and gave me a crazed look as he pulled a handful of M80's from his left coat pocket and a lighter from the right one.

"You tell Chief to make contact with Cree his own damn self, I've got a dipshit about to firebomb the car."

_"What car?"_

"Unit Two, that's what car. Get Creeley over here right now, I'm going to apprehend this annoying little psycho and I don't know what he's carrying."

_"Unit Two is in the shop with a punctured radiator."_

_"I'm_ in Unit Two Kevin. Unit Three is in the shop."

_"I don't think we have a Unit Three."_

Another pause, which I was grateful for because I was suddenly entertaining the idea of going back to the station and killing Kevin - but just as I was beginning to think I could actually get away with it Wilson tossed an M80 over the top of the car. Andy and I both ducked our heads under the dashboard as it exploded behind us in a flashbang that shook the entire vehicle.

_"Chief says - "_

"Kevin you tell Chief to say it to me himself if he has so much to say!"

Chief's voice boomed over the radio two seconds later. _"Morley, get Wilson in that cruiser and get back to the station."_

"Oh shit."

Wilson lit another one and dropped it next to the driver side door; I scrambled across the console into Andy's side of the seat and covered my ears, not sure which sound I was trying to drown out the most - the explosives, or Chief yelling at me to stop dicking around and make the arrest. "Okay that's it." I switched off the radio and pointed my finger at Andy as I got out of the car. "You be ready if he runs."

"No way, I'm strictly relay remember?"

"You unstrap that seatbelt right now and be ready to get your skinny ass out of this car if he runs or so help me Andy I will tell Creeley you like to get pegged." I slammed the door but could still hear him through it as he yelled back,

"He already knows that!"

Once I was out of the car I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to handle this situation. My back was killing me, the streets were slicked with ice again, my shoes were still completely inappropriate for the conditions, Andy was refusing to engage, and chasing after this crackhead myself was so far down on the list of things I wanted to do today that it was barely even _on_ the list. We were sitting at the epicenter of a labyrinth of side alleys too narrow for the vehicle, which meant one thing. If he didn't get in the car of his own free will there was going to be a huge fucking annoying pursuit again, and I was in no mood.

"Listen Wilson, I'm in no mood - "

Wilson stared me down for about seven seconds while I started reading him his rights, and then he did exactly what I knew he was going to do. I knew it before I left the station, I knew it as I was driving out to the intersection of Numbass and Nostrilhair, and I knew it as I was getting out of the car. I just didn't expect him to do it quite the way he did it, and by the time he had jumped over my head and rolled on the ice before scrambling to get back on his feet and flip me off with both hands, I was spinning around to scream _"GET HIM!!"_ at Andy like he was an attack dog trained to follow my command.

Andy, however, just sat there in the car shaking his head.

"Come on Andy please!!"

"No!" he yelled at me through the window while he locked the doors from the inside. "I'm not a cop Greta! I'm the fucking errand boy!"

"You have all the legs, come on!"

"NO!!"

Wilson laughed like a frigging hyena on nitrous and took off, headed off down the side alley adjacent to us, guaranteeing that I couldn't use the vehicle to pursue him while I stood staring threateningly at Andy through the driver side window.

"Andrew Burns, you unlock this door right now."

"No thank you."

"Andy - "

We both flinched and ducked at the same time. Wilson was setting off M80's again, tossing them over his shoulder as he ran.

"Andy, you're my only asset here. I'm not armed or I'd just shoot him in the ass and be done with it but Chief won't give me a goddamn gun because he's afraid I'll kill Creeley with it so I'm _begging_ you - "

He was sitting there with his arms crossed on his chest, not looking at me.

"Andy, come on. I'll give you anything you want." We could hear more firecrackers going off in the distance and the sound of Wilson cackling, echoing down the long alley. Andy finally looked at me, then leaned over and rolled the window down.

"I can't think of anything I want right now, sorry."

"A blow job?"

"No thanks, I'm still sore from last time."

"I can order you to do it."

"Chief says I don't have to listen to you."

M80's were going off nonstop now from a few blocks over. No doubt every resident over the age of thirty was calling the station to complain while I stood in the middle of the street, locked out of my own cruiser, trying to bribe an Irishman with sexual favors and failing miserably.

"Anything you want Andy - you don't have to decide now, you can save it for later."

He seemed to be thinking about it, then nodded and started to climb out of the car. "Yeah okay."

Bless his gigantic goofy heart. I'd have dropped to my knees in front of God and the entire Seniors Quilting Brigade to kiss either his hands or his dick - at the moment I wasn't picky about which - but we had a local to apprehend, and the explosions were sounding further and further away now as Wilson navigated the twisty side alleys at a crankhead speed that was beginning to impress me. Andy unfolded himself from the cruiser and stretched his back, sighing the sigh of a man who'd had enough before the day even got good and started.

"You're a good man, Andy."

"No, I'm a pussy that can't say no to you."

"That too."

The longsuffering resignation on that boy's face would have been enough to make a Grand Inquisitor allow him to keep his own religion. It was nearly enough to make me tell him to forget it and get back in the warm safety of the car, but by the time I bent over to grab the Kevlar vest from the back seat and stood back up he was gone and a battered old Tahoe was pulling into the street behind me. Creeley poked his head out the window and shot me what had to be his very best frown of utmost disapproval. He was staring at the heavy vest in my hands.

"Ohh you're fucked. That was the _one thing_ Chief told you to do - "

"Shut up Creeley, we've had explosives going off all over the damn place and you were supposed to be here!"

He eyed one of the scorched little ice craters in the icy street. "Those are M80's. Might as well be lickin' poprocks and spittin' on ya."

Another blast from a few blocks over brought a huge delighted grin to his face. I looked behind me in time to see Andy charge off to the west down a side alley, away from the blast zone; he was either buggering off or he had something in mind, and since I still had no idea where the hell any of these streets came out, I figured my best bet was to get back in the car and take the next left to see if I could track his direction from the main street. I flipped Creeley the bird and threw the vest into the passenger seat.

"Do your job!"

"Blow me."

About seven blocks west I caught a glimpse of Wilson cutting across somebody's yard and took a right to see if I could cut him off at the stop sign, just as Andy came tearing out of a connecting alley in front of me and brought my pedestrian hit count to two for the day. He bounced off the right fender and kept going, and as I watched him turn down the utility lane behind the cafe I realized what he was doing. The brilliant boy was going to come out right where Wilson was crossing toward the courthouse. He was loudly singing some dirty Irish drinking song as he ran, letting Wilson know where he was.

He was flushing him out, herding him like a sheepdog toward the main street where I could take over the chase with the vehicle.

Long tall Not-Officer Burns obviously knew what he was doing.

I didn't expect the collision, though.

It wasn't clear who ran into who, but the end result was two pairs of legs flying and a huge tangle of bodies and limbs hitting the ground and rolling around as Andy tried to keep Wilson from getting back up. I edged the cruiser up slowly and parked about twenty feet away from the tussle to call in our location.

I could see Cree sitting in his car on the other side of the square, laughing his ass off.

"Stay down Wilson!"

I climbed out of the Taurus and immediately slipped, slamming onto the ice more on my hip than on my ass, which was a rotten bit of luck to add to all the rest of the rotten bits of luck the day had graced me with. A shooting pain shotgunned its way up my spine in a jolt so severe that it felt for a few seconds like I was going to pass out, and then just as quickly, it ungripped me and I could breathe again.

That was gonna hurt later.

"Greta shit look out!!"

Instinct told me to tuck and roll just as Andy came flying at me, plowing face first into the ice and knocking Wilson's hastily tossed - and lit - M80 into a snowbank, which promptly exploded in a blinding spray of melted snow. And then Wilson was on his feet and running again, taking every last ounce of my resolve and determination with him. There was no way I was going to get my suddenly very disabled-feeling self up off the street in time to catch him, not that I could have chased him down even if I hadn't been in an extremely worrisome kind of dull pain from the waist down. I reached for Andy's arms while he tried to help me up, his face all kinds of confused about whether he should be resuming pursuit or assisting me.

"Let him go, we'll get him during sensitivity training on Wednesday." I pushed his hands off my face and cursed as our perp absconded. Again.

This was getting embarrassing.

And then Creeley stepped out of his car, unfurling all six-plus feet of his raggedy badass self, and stuck one thick arm out to clothesline Wilson right at the throat as he ran past. Wilson's lower half kept going while his top half screeched to an innard-liquifying halt, his feet flying up as his head went down. He hit the ice good and hard, looking adequately deceased while Cree leaned back on the Tahoe and crossed his arms over his chest.

It was a little bit impressive, I had to give the big asshole that much.

"Pretty sure I heard the lady tell you to stay the fuck down, dumbass."

Wilson was rolling around on the ground gasping and trying to get some air moving through his likely collapsed trachea when I finally limped over, huffing hard as usual even though I hadn't done any actual running this time. Andy trudged along behind me, angry as a hornet and glaring at me and Wilson both.

"I don't think I want to be friends anymore Greta."

Cree shot him a sideways look as he reached back into his vehicle for a set of cuffs. "You better get that damn vest on boy, Chief's gonna be out here in a minute."

"Fuck." The Kevlar was still in the cruiser. "Get it on Andy, now."

Andy didn't obey; he stood there staring at me while I bent over like an old lady, clutching at my spasming lower back and swaying against Cree's vehicle to keep to my feet while Wilson kicked and cursed, resisting arrest as usual and calling us every colorful combination of insults and epithets he could cobble together as Cree shoved him into the back seat. And then with a sickening _hhrrrghh_ sound, our morning routine was rendered complete.

"Geezus, numbnuts. How many of those blueberry fairies did you fuckin' eat?"

"Just about that many," Andy groaned, sliding down the side of the car holding his stomach. "How many times have I told you I can't do this? I keep tellin' you but you don't listen to me!"

Cree leaned over and put his face right in front of mine. "How many times has he told you, huh?"

If there hadn't been a stabbing pain taking my breath away right that moment I would have had a few carefully selected words to share with him. Instead I shared a carefully selected finger, which felt adequately satisfactory under the circumstances. Chief's voice came over the radio inside the Tahoe just as Cree was pursing his lips to blow a kiss at my upright digit.

_"Somebody want to tell me what the hell's going on or am I going to have to come out there and deal with it myself?"_

Cree stood up and looked from me to Andy and back again. I couldn't blame him for the disgusted look on his face, I'd have probably been wearing the same expression if I was him. "You takin' this or am I?"

I wanted to take it, I really did...but all I could do was shake my head, because whatever good all those months of therapy on my back had done, it was all feeling solidly undone now. I sat down on the ice next to Andy and patted his leg.

"Wequeefwell's benchwarmer division," he said with a tired little laugh, leaning over against me. Cree reached down and ruffled his hair, and then I'll be damned if he didn't do the same to me. Any other day I'd have grabbed his hand and snapped something off of it, but sitting there on the cold ground listening to Wilson froth at the mouth and kick the windows in the back seat of the Tahoe, breathless from the pain in my lower back and wondering if I was going to be able to get up before my ass went numb, I decided anything was better than a sharp stick in the eye.

"Yeah Chief, Wilson's sittin' in Unit Three right now. How you want me to process him? Holdin' tank or Weemeetwa Reservoir?"

"I _knew_ there was a Unit Three! Somebody please inform Kevin, I'm tired of fighting with him about _goddamn Unit Three."_

Chief's voice came over the handset, and I opened my eyes to see Cree was holding it down in front of my face.

_"Tank for Wilson, reservoir for Morley if Andy's not wearing his vest."_

Ahh shit. I looked over at Andy's heavy fleece coat. No vest. I looked back up at Creeley and I'll be buggered if he wasn't walking around the front of the vehicle, staring off at the buildings across the square as he replied.

"I don't see Andy, Chief - you'll have to ask him about that." He very purposefully avoided looking in our direction as we scrambled up off the ice - as close to scrambling as we could get in our condition, at any rate - and went around the other side of the vehicle to pee into the frozen rose bushes lining the curb while Andy hotfooted it back to Unit Two with me following at a hobbled pace. He was strapped into the Kevlar and waiting in the passenger seat when I got there, all bulletproof and still just a little bit green in the gills from Ted's blueberry fairies...but technically he was following orders, which meant by default I was too.

It was starting to look like I might just have half a chance of making it here after all. Until I ended up in the reservoir or Hawk called me home, whichever came first.

_To be continued..._


	28. You Tell Me Yours And I'll Tell You Mine

Andy and I made it back to the station without any further incident and were immediately whistled into Chief's office. Verbal reports were standard procedure after an officer/perp incident, and since Cree was coming out with a smirk on his face as we were going in, I figured this was going to go all kinds of sideways on us. But he'd played dumb for us at the scene and I was clinging to a dim hope that he hadn't doubled back on us during his report.

Andy reached over my head to grab the door as Cree left it to slam shut in my face; apparently his good will toward me only stretched so far, and likely only because Andy would suffer too if I went down for misconduct. I wouldn't have dragged him down with me, but we were sort of a default pair now and it was becoming obvious that if I was involved in something stupid, Andy was likely standing nearby holding my beer.

No time was wasted on niceties and Chief lit into us the second the door fell shut behind us.

"Okay so which one of you wants to tell me why Wilson got away?"

Andy looked at me and then back at Chief, confusion scrunching his face as he pointed back toward the main room.

"He didn't, he's in the holding cell right now."

"At the _scene,_ Andy. I have a log here of no less than...ohh I'd say twenty-five, thirty calls from the period of time _after_ radio contact was made with you. Seems pretty safe to assume that he got away from you at that point."

I cleared my throat.

"With respect, Sir - we're talking about Wilson the white Jesse Owens."

"Okay I'll give you that."

"Chief, Greta did her best but - "

Chief leveled that icy blue stare at him. "But what?"

"But she's not armed and you told me to stay in the car and Cree didn't show up til later. You know Wilson's got issues."

"All fair points. Did you get out of the car?" Andy shot a quick look at me and then at the floor, which was enough to answer Chief's question without saying anything. "Yeah that's what I thought. Goddammit Morley, are you ever going to listen to a word I say??"

"I take full responsibility for that Sir. He tried to obey your order and I made him get out."

"I don't doubt that for a second. What's it going to take to - "

Andy cut in in a voice so quiet that we had no choice but to shut up to hear him. "Chief I'm a grown ass adult, I didn't have to get out of the car."

"Seriously Andy? All anyone has to do is smile at you and you'll follow them anywhere. What did she promise you?"

Oh...oh _hell_ no, he wasn't going to go after Irish boy's good nature like that, not with me standing right there with a full-on monopoly on the blame. "Now wait a second Chief, you're being a bit of an asshole here - "

He ignored me.

"What got you out of the car Andy? What'd she threaten you with?"

Andy shuffled his feet, twisting his hands in front of him like a nervous kid. "A blow job. But I turned it down." I think I felt my mouth drop open and without thinking I reached out and smacked him on the arm.

"That wasn't a threat Andy, geezus."

"It was from where I'm standing."

Chief truly, genuinely looked like he was going to blow something out his earholes. He raised a finger to point at us and had his mouth open to begin what I'm sure would have been an impressive upbraid, but his phone started vibrating across his desk before he could get a word out and he ended up tilting that finger up to put us on pause while he answered it. A quick second later he was turning his back and hurriedly shooing us out.

Neither of us was going to dispute that little stroke of luck. We scrambled out of his office like a couple of kids leaving the principal's office and I headed for the break room in search of that bottle of aspirin I'd seen Sarah hitting, because there was a hefty pain starting to creep up my backbone on a direct trajectory for my skull. I successfully managed to sneak past Hobo without losing any body parts - though it was iffy there for a few stressful seconds when he stuck his head out of the bathroom doorway and showed me a set of snaggly hellhound teeth wrapped around a snarl that would stop Steve Irwin where he stood - and I was squinting against the harsh flickering fluorescent lights of the break room when my phone started reading out a text in a loud accent of indeterminate origin. My ears weren't working quite right but I was pretty sure there was something about my ass being the recipient of a bowling pin, though through the ringing in my skull I couldn't be a hundred percent certain it wasn't actually a farming combine. I shoved a hand into my pocket to shut it off.

It was right about then that everything fell apart.

My back had been twinging off and on for a couple of days but I'd written it off as an unlucky combination of multiple falls on the ice, job related stress, and the overall clenched up posture I'd been carrying since day one of my arrival in this frozen wasteland. My slip on the street that morning definitely felt like it had done some damage, but I'd walked it off and played myself a nice little round of denial roulette in the interest of soldiering on and not looking like a wuss in front of my co-workers. None of the above could be doing my herniated vertebrae much good.

And then the universe proved me right, though I'd have been perfectly happy if it had disagreed with me just this once.

There's not a lot of recall between being upright and muttering curses at Creeley for turning my phone into a personal self esteem destroyer and going to my knees on the cold tile breakroom floor. But suddenly it wasn't just my knees that felt cold, and I realized my head had gone south as well.

And then Chief's voice was there, close to my face and authoritative as always. "Geezus, what happened?"

"I dunno, she just went down."

"Heh."

"Not now Cree. Morley?" I couldn't open my eyes yet - the pain was too sharp for me to catch my breath. "Morley, can you nod your head so I know you can hear me?"

I nodded, but it wasn't without some effort.

"What kind of injuries did you get in the accident?"

Andy's voice, rushed and frantic from a further distance than Chief's, whispered in behind the pain hammering through my skull. "It's in her file Chief - "

"Quiet, go get the doc. Morley? You hearin' me?"

My voice was squeaky when I finally got it working enough to put a few words together. "Discs two and four."

"Ruptured?"

I nodded, but that hurt worse than speaking so I switched back to voice. "And left hip."

"Is that what's clutching on you right now?"

"No, it's - " I shifted to try to push myself up and was promptly put in my place by a screaming pinched nerve that obviously didn't want me to move. _"Shit oh god."_

"Okay, lets see if we can get you on your back."

"Heh - "

"Cree I swear to _god._ Morley I'm gonna put my hands under your shoulders and help you turn over, okay?"

I realized as soon as he touched me that I was in the standard napping-toddler position, with my forehead on the floor and my ass in the air, and if that wasn't the most embarrassing thing I could think of right then I'd be fibbing through my teeth. I sucked in my breath and let Chief turn me, wondering who the hell was moving my legs as the three of us got me over onto my back on the cold tile floor.

"It's okay Morley, we got ya."

Rushed squeaky footsteps came into the room - Converse sneakers, size 16, I'd have known that noise anywhere - and I heard the unmistakable raspy sound of Andy breathing hard. "Doc doesn't want to get out on the ice, he says bring her in."

"Not even with you helping him?"

"He said no."

A heavy sigh. "Okay. _Cree."_

Arms immediately went under my back and knees - really big arms, not Chief's. Something scratchy and shaggy brushed my face and I recoiled in horror before I even opened my eyes...I knew it was Creeley, and I knew he was picking me up.

This was completely unacceptable on every imaginable level.

"No I can walk!!"

"Oh shut up crybaby."

"Not you! I don't consent to this! Where's Kevin, get Kevin he's big - "

"Knock it off Morley, he's just gonna carry you down the street to doc's."

"What? Why him?"

"He's best on ice. It's five doors down, won't take long. Just...hold your breath and think about LA."

"Oh god."

I clenched my eyes shut - the last thing in the world I could stomach at the moment was seeing Bobby Creeley's face that close to mine. "Don't think this means I like you," he said quietly, his voice just oozing with a highly amused grin that I could hear as plain as his words. "I just don't want you dying on my break room floor - that's where I take my naps."

This couldn't be my life. This detour was so far off the established road of my existence that I seemed to have veered out of control head-on into someone else's. But since there was literally nothing else I could do and a big hairy sasquatch was hefting me up off the floor in a surprisingly gentle lift and heading for the door with me, I just did as I was told for the first time since I'd arrived. I closed my eyes and thought of LA. It didn't do a thing for the humiliation and even less for the pain, but at least I had a bargaining tool now.

I'd actually obeyed a direct order from Chief. Seven days late and a few lost arguments short, but it had to count for something.

The Doc was so old and grizzled that I couldn't bring myself to begrudge him his refusal to brave the ice. And Chief was right about Creeley - he was exceptionally surefooted on the slick sidewalk, probably at least partly due to his gigantic cleated work boots that looked to weigh about fifteen pounds per foot. He had sat me on the exam table and then planted himself against the far wall like some huge protective dad overseeing his kid's soccer physical, not even snickering once when the old guy yanked my shirt up to take a look at my back, and when it came time to escort me back down to the station he hung back and let me use Andy as a walking stick while he trudged along behind us smoking a cigarette. Not even a rude comment or a single snide remark about how hard the day was dominating my ass.

I didn't know what to do with this new information. The logging truck might be noisy and belch a lot of smoke, but it also seemed to be fairly reliable and capable of getting the job done. I still didn't think it would hesitate to run me over with no warning and even less regret, though...and then back up and do it again.

Better safe and suspicious than snookered and sorry.

It was obvious I was going to be less than useful at the station, so rather than keep me around as a potential liability while I lay stretched out and whining on the break room table, Chief sent me home. A half hour later Steve the Taxidermist dropped off my painkillers and muscle relaxers from the drug store on the square - the man was obviously going for the gold in the moonlighting category - and ten minutes beyond that I was face down across my shiny new toddler sized single, fully dressed with my shoes still on and snoring before the overly zealous un-broken-in mattress springs even stopped bouncing me.

When I woke up Andy was next to me on the bed. It was a tight fit and he had one leg on the floor, but he'd managed to wedge his crazy long self mostly into the frame. The parts of him that didn't fit were folded up under both of us and the rest were strewn wherever. I've never in my entire life seen a person with so many body parts.

I turned my face toward him and nudged my mouth up against his shoulder. "I'm sorry I almost got you killed. Again."

"Greta. Come here." He shifted down on the pillows so that we were face to face and planted a soft kiss on my forehead. "Don't let Chief get to you, he can be a hardass sometimes but he's just overprotective of me."

_Yeah for a guy who's so overprotective he sure keeps sending you out with me like he's got a twenty on you in the office deadpool_ \- I was close to saying it out loud but I was too tired, too cottonmouthed from the painkillers, and too out of it to put that many words together. I also knew Andy would defend Chief to the death, and making him feel bad just wasn't in me.

"You're my best friend here, Andy. Hell, I think you're my best friend anywhere."

He looked confused, those deepset green eyes widening while he thought about what I'd just said. "Well that's just...sad. But I'm happy. Not happy that you don't have any other friends, but happy that you like me."

"Everybody likes you, dork."

"Yeah, I'm sorta blessed with a harmless stupidity. People seem to appreciate that, I think it makes them feel better about themselves."

"Lucky you." I tucked in under his arm while he wriggled over onto his back. "It's not even completely for real though, is it."

He laughed a little, softly, next to my ear. It was a comforting warm sound. "Yeah." He shifted in the bed again and I cuddled in against his chest now that he was settled as good as he was going to get. He was ridiculously bony and angular and awkward to lay on, but solid and warm once you found just the right spot. Nice. I could smell the coconut in his hair from his shampoo and for one shameful moment I wondered what Chief's hair smelled like after a shower. Or after sex.

If my lower back wasn't throbbing I would have considered straddling Andy and riding him till Chief Tommy Davis of the Weareinsufferable PD heard me accidentally scream his name five doors down at that hollybush infested house with the hideous teal shutters.

God. It had to be the meds.

"Can I tell you a little secret?"

"Sure."

"My partner...ex partner...Joe. He has a kid. Little girl. I was going to try to adopt her. Had all the paperwork in progress and was about to start the interviews but it all got put on hold when the charges started being handed down. Then I got sent here and..." I sighed and Andy hugged me tighter. "Can you imagine me with a kid? But Joe didn't have any relatives in the States and I thought...well, I don't really know what I thought. Stupid huh."

"I think you have a good heart, Greta. Your method is a little off sometimes, but you mean well. And I think you'd be great with a kid." He started stroking my hair with those long gentle fingers of his and in spite of myself everything sort of just...faded to an unimportant hum in the background. "I read your file and there's nothing in there that makes me think it was your fault."

The brakes screeched to a tire-balding stop on the unimportant hum.

"You read my file?? How have you read my file?!"

"Chief gave it to me before you got here."

"He what?! _Why?"_

"I have a photographic memory, he makes me read stuff because he forgets. He's had a head injury, details slip away from him sometimes."

I knew the conversation was about to veer off in some whiplash-inducing direction and I would lose control of it forever if I didn't reel it back in fast, but I was equal parts confused and mortified at this bit of news. There were two files on me that I knew of - the first was my standard officer records that could and would be shared between departments in the event of a transfer, but the other was confidential and contained the details of...everything else. I'd never even read it myself. _It's sealed until after the inquiry and investigation are over_ Hawk had told me, and so I hadn't even asked to see the contents of the two inch thick file laying on the desk in front of him. Knowing Chief and Andy and god only knew how many other people had been given privy to it made me feel all kinds of creepy and violated. "Okay I get it you're his yellow highlighter but why is _he_ reading my file??"

"I don't know Greta, isn't it standard procedure in a disciplinary transfer?"

I cringed so hard at those words that my neck kinked up. _Disciplinary transfer._ This place was definitely a punishment, there was no denying that...but the preliminary investigation had all but cleared me of blame, I'd been told that much at least. The official investigation had yet to wrap up and submit its findings so calling anything _disciplinary_ was premature and potentially libelous, but there wasn't much I could do about it no matter how much it stung. The fact remained that I'd disobeyed a direct order that may or may not have contributed to a fatality event, and therefore any action taken against me was definitely of the disciplinary type.

"It's not standard procedure, no. Not any that I'm aware of anyway."

Andy didn't seem to understand what I was upset about, but the returning pain in my back and hip were enough of a distraction that I'm sure he assumed it was the reason for my mild hysterics. Or maybe it was just me that assumed that. Either way, fifteen minutes later my file was simultaneously the first and last thing that drifted out of my skull on a dreamy fog as the Tramadol slid into the driver's seat and took the wheel, and the sound of Andy humming against the side of my head just sort of filled the space it vacated with a soft, hazy kind of relaxation that only babies and heavily medicated adults with major denial issues and a religious-sized side helping of guilt can manage.

Morning hurt like no hell I'd ever met before. Even in the screaming middle of rehabilitational therapy it had never smarted like this, a shitty side effect of the bitter cold that never seemed to let up in this place despite how many times I'd sent Andy to crank up the thermostat during the night. My house felt about as cold inside as I was sure it was outside. Apparently these creaky old gingerbread domiciles didn't realize they'd been plopped down in the big freaking middle of the North Pole, or maybe Chief was just being an ass again and had my heater set wrong, knowing I'd never figure it out. For all I knew there was a big open steel oven in the basement that I was supposed to be shoveling coal into and he would conveniently not bother to mention it to me until the day I got on the plane to go back to LA.

Goddamn Chief. My weird little obsession with him was starting to toe a shaky line between wanting to smack his ridiculously handsome face and wanting to bareback it. Maybe even both. At the same time. While calling him Sir and watching those fiery blue eyes of his go all dark right before he growled _Goddammit Morley_ \- 

I didn't hear the knock at the door, if there was one. Chief was just suddenly standing there in my front room, stomping the new morning snow off his boots and looking up in surprise at just about the same time I did, though I'm sure the pink in his cheeks was from the chilly air outside and not from the wanton entertainment of stray smutty thoughts like mine. My hands went to my face to hide the physical manifestation of the heat I could feel creeping up the sides of my neck at just about the time I realized with immense gratitude that Andy must have helped me into a decent pair of pajamas at some point during the night.

"You're up? I thought you'd still be asleep."

"Is that why you're breaking into my house at six a.m.?"

He grinned a bit sheepishly, holding up a heavy key ring that had to have had twenty keys on it. "Landlord, remember? I was going to check on you and..." He gestured awkwardly toward the door in some indecipherable kind of embarrassed sign language I was too uncomfortable to interpret. "Just wanted to make you were doing okay, see if you needed anything."

I nodded and tried really hard to keep a straight face, but he was floundering; he obviously hadn't considered the possibility that I'd be up and he would have to actually interact with me. Which was funny as hell to me, considering the fact that we'd shared a half drunken kiss just two nights ago and this stammering man-boy standing in my livingroom wasn't anywhere near the same person that had growled at me to rub myself on him while our colleagues dogpiled a hockey puck a couple dozen yards away.

"Well, at least it cuts out the step where I give you a key. Now if we could just skip a few more and get straight to the part where I call you Sir until you make me regret it - "

Chief's eyes narrowed suddenly, but it wasn't because of the likely narcotics-induced words that were coming out of my mouth...he was staring at some point past my shoulder, and in that breathtaking _oh shit_ moment when I remembered Andy was asleep in my bedroom, I turned to see the tall skinny dork behind me. In my bathrobe.

"What the fuck is he doing here?"

That tone got my back up in a hurry and I stood as straight as I could under the circumstances, staring Chief in the eye. "He's looking after me."

"In a twin sized bed."

"Yeah thanks for that by the way." The way he was looking at Andy was making me angry and I knew we were just about to enter phase five of One Step Forward Two Steps Back, but the jealousy shtick was getting old and I wasn't about to start accommodating it. "You did that on purpose. You said you don't want me sleeping with anyone and then you pulled this shitty little power play to make sure I had to abide by your wishes. You're not my fucking father and you're sure as _hell_ not my fucking husband, so I'll thank you to keep your damn puritanical ideology out of my bedroom!"

"Chief, it's okay, she was out of it on the meds Doc gave her - "

Before I could think to put a hand out to stop him, Chief stepped around me and decked Andy. Just straight up suckerpunched him, square in the face - it was a full fisted crack that he didn't even try to pull, and as Andy doubled over I slapped my hands over my mouth and stood there staring at him in shock.

Amazingly, judging by the sheer force of the hit, Andy didn't go down...instead he looked up with an expression of betrayal that looked a hell of a lot more like hurt feelings than a hurt jawbone. "Geezus Chief, what'd you hit me for?"

Chief was still standing there with his fist up like he was going to take another swing. I couldn't allow that.

"Chief what the fuck!? This is _Andy_."

The look on his face instantly fell to something like regret, then shame, and he lowered his fist. "Geezus, Andy - I'm sorry kid."

Andy was still hunched over, rubbing his jaw. _"Why'd you hit me?"_ He genuinely didn't understand and I stared at Chief, waiting to hear what he was going to say. But Chief didn't say anything, and the next fifteen or so seconds as he looked guiltily at the floor and then finally back at me were fifteen of the most anxious non-job related seconds I've ever spent in my life. The look on his face said everything he didn't seem to have the words for, and when I sighed and looked away from him I think he assumed I was dismissing him.

"I'm sorry kid. I'm just - sorry."

He turned to leave, and for the first time in a long time I made a decision that I could actually be proud of. I didn't stop him, and I didn't go after him, and when the door closed behind him and the blast of cold air he'd let in dissipated around us, I guided Andy to the kitchen and made him get on his knees so I could inspect his mouth for broken teeth and run a finger inside his lip to check for blood. He seemed okay, surprisingly. But it was definitely time for some answers, and I sat down gingerly in one of the hard wooden kitchen chairs that had come with the house and pointed at the other one.

"Sit down cutiepie - I have questions and you have answers, and fate keeps slamming us together so we might as well ride this cockeyed merry go round until one of us falls off." He sat down and I reached across to stroke his hair as he laid his head on the table with a groan. "We're gonna start with Chief's wife, and then we're going to talk about what's in my file, and then if nobody's taken us out with sniper fire I think it might be time for you to explain why the hell you're being babysat by an entire police station full of people who are just as displaced here as you are."

His head came up and the surprised look in his eyes turned quickly to apprehension, and _that_ was the moment I can pinpoint as the exact moment I knew my suspicions were likely correct. I just wasn't one hundred percent sure what those suspicions _were_. But Andy was the most guilelessly honest person I'd ever met, and I wasn't above using it.

"I can't, Greta. I'm not supposed to." His look turned apologetic, like he genuinely regretted not being able to give me what I wanted, and while he sat there rubbing his jaw and opening and closing his mouth with a painful wince I ran through all the methods I knew to loosen his inhibitions. And then he leveled that pretty gaze of his at me and smiled the sweetly innocent smile of someone who knows a really good secret that they're just about to tease you with. "He's mad at you and me both because he thinks you're an interdepartmental plant and you're here to flush me out. I know you're not, but he's not so sure. He forgets I know what I'm looking at."

Holy macarena-dancing Christ in a conga line. I needed a college-rule notebook and two extra pencils to start dissecting everything packed into those three little sentences, but I wouldn't have known where to start even if I could close my mouth and remember to blink. I'd said some of those things to Chief jokingly...looking back on it I realized he hadn't really addressed any of it when I said it, but he'd definitely deflected the line of conversation to safer waters.

_Interdepartmental plant._

_Flush me out._

_I know you're not._

_He forgets I know what I'm looking at..._

I got up to put on a pot of coffee, because this was going to take a while...but not with Andy. I wasn't about to get him into more trouble, the poor guy had taken enough in my behalf for the last week to fill his quota of unjustly raised voices for just about the entirety of the upcoming decade, and that wasn't even taking into consideration the pop in the jaw he'd just been dealt because of me.

This was gonna be Chief, all of it.

"Andy, babe, could you go get me my phone from the bedroom? I've got a call to make."

_To be continued..._


	29. Day Of Reckoning

When I dialed Chief's number I heard a phone ring from not far away, muffled but close. Andy's eyes went wide and his voice dropped to a stage whisper, pointing frantically at the front door.

_"He didn't leave!!"_

I waved him toward the bedroom and he obeyed immediately, scrambling to get out of sight while I detoured through the livingroom to the front of the house. "I didn't tell you anything, make sure he knows that!" he whispered loudly at me. I shushed him and pointed down the hall like a frazzled mom issuing a final bedtime edict to a rowdy kid who won't stay in bed.

"Just get in the bedroom and keep quiet, maybe he'll forget you're here."

He vanished down the hallway just as I yanked the front door open to...nothing. Nobody was there, just a heavy flittering of snowfall that was starting to get heavier and a bitter cold wind that bit through the sweater I had on over my sleep tee. But I could still hear a ringtone.

I stepped out on the porch and followed the sound to the left. Chief was standing there off to the side, leaning against the front of the house with his phone in his hand, just looking down at it. It was still ringing.

"You gonna answer that?"

He slowly turned his head toward me, then looked back down at his phone again. And then he touched the answer button and put it to his ear.

"Chief Davis."

I raised my own phone to my ear. "Yeah, hi. I'd like to file an assault report, some asshole just came into my house without permission and punched my friend in the face."

He sighed, and I heard the sigh in one ear and the sound of his breath hissing over the phone in the other. "Is the victim alright?"

"He's fine, a little bit confused and a whole lot sad. Between his jaw and his heart I think I'd rather be the jaw right now."

"Shit."

He was feeling heavy remorse, I could see it all over his posture and in the tragic way his brows were furrowed over his eyes. Good. "Would you mind coming over and dealing with this?"

"Yeah...yeah. I'll be right there." He hung up and stood there for a long while with his head back against the house, eyes closed, not moving and not speaking, like I wasn't standing four feet away staring judgmentally at him with my arms crossed over my chest. And then he huffed out a foggy breath of absolute resignation and turned toward me as he stuffed his phone into the pocket of his coat. "I got a call on a domestic situation at this address."

"You got here fast."

"I was in the neighborhood."

He moved to step onto the porch and paused to look down at the ground when his foot hit something, then looked back up at me with an eyebrow raised in confusion as he pointed down at a bread-loaf sized lump laying in the snow.

"It's llama butter." I stepped back and pushed the door open, gesturing him inside with a broad sweep of one arm. If there was anything more readable on his face than the utter dread and despair of a man about to receive a righteous verbal takedown, I sure as hell couldn't see it. And as Chief Tommy Davis turned sideways to step through into the house he'd just stomped out of less than ten minutes before without touching me, I felt the heady warm rush of victory already working its way toward the pleasure center in my brain. I wasn't likely to get laid this day, but I was absolutely going to get my informational rocks off even if it killed one of us.

And I wasn't planning on dying in Weepeeourpantsville.

"Okay first, what was that??"

"I'm sorry."

"I don't understand you, you're worse than a woman with your moods." I pointed to the chair on the other side of the rickety kitchen table and watched with a smug bit of glee as he sat down. "Andy is your friend, right? And he didn't do anything, by the way - he was just here making sure I'm okay _which you should be thanking him for."_

"I know, I'm just - I'm sorry, okay?"

"You hurt his feelings."

He just stared at me, sort of wide eyed, like he didn't understand my argument. "Did you hear me? You absolutely broke that sweet guy's heart you know, he looks up to you and you treated him like he was cockblocking your halfassed attempt to get some girl's Tinder ID."

"Fuck, don't do that."

"Don't do what? Use Andy's feelings against you? Why the hell not, it's valid. What would you do if I told you he cried right after you left?"

The look of terror on Chief's face was almost comical. "Geezus, did he?"

"No, but would you feel bad if he did?"

"Of course I would Greta, he's like a fucking son to me. Just stop, okay?"

"If he's like a son to you then why are you so jealous of him being around me?"

He looked away, embarrassment coloring his cheeks suddenly. "Because I don't feel comfortable showing feels when someone else is looking, alright? And he's always with you so whatever feels I got I have to keep quiet. Plus I don't trust you."

My brain skipped right over the first part and landed with a screaming headbutt on the final bit. "He's always with me because you're always sending us out on calls together! Damn funny way of showing distrust, putting your protected witness in a car with someone you don't even know!!"

"Yeah and you're not taking the fucking hint, either of you! I put you together at work and you're supposed to be so sick of each other by quitting time you go separate ways for the rest of the day _but nope not you two, you're cemented together at the goddamn pelvis!"_

"Stop being a shitty baby for two fucking seconds and act like a Chief of Police and maybe, just maybe - wait a second, did you actually use the word _feels?"_

He stared at me with pretty much the same exact look I'm sure was plastered all over my own face right at that moment. "Did you say _protected witness?"_

We sat there in silence for a long several seconds, both of us sort of slack jawed and flustered, neither of us sure what exactly to say or do next. He finally took a deep breath and leaned forward in his chair; I listened to it squeak like it was on its last legs, wondering blankly why everything in this town seemed to make that same noise. "I'm going to ask you this one time only, Morley, and if I don't like your answer two things are going to happen. First I'm going to hit a single button on my phone, and second you're going to wake up in the cargo hold of a plane headed to some third world country that you're going to have a hell of a time getting out of." He sat back and laid his phone on the table in front of him. The lockscreen was open and the keypad was on. "Are we clear on this?"

I stared down at this hands, laying still on either side of the phone. I didn't doubt him for a second - the deadly calm that had come into his eyes when he said _if I don't like your answer two things are going to happen_ was chillingly serious enough to put any question about his intentions right out to pasture. I nodded, but leaned forward at the same time to see what his reaction would be.

He didn't move, but one hand twitched almost imperceptibly next to the phone.

"Yeah well thanks to Cree my phone probably speaks whatever language is native there." No reaction. Damn, Chief was a tough one once he got past the aw-shucks bashful act. "If I'm here for whatever you think I'm here for, you know I've likely been trained to lie my way around any question you ask me."

He sat back slowly, finally taking his eyes off me, scrubbing his hands up and down on his face like he was exhausted. It was six thirty in the morning and I wasn't totally convinced he'd slept the previous night. "We checked into you."

"We?"

The nod of his head was as terse as the little smile on his lips. _"We._ Your accident was real. So was your position in the department, you were definitely Division 25. Turns out you're sorta famous out West." I tried to keep the smug grin off my face while he shifted uncomfortably in his squeaky chair. "No way would anyone pull a high profile officer from a flashy unit like HSP off the job to go undercover, not with the kind of attention Division 25 gets. You guys took out the San Palmos cartel, we even know about that all the way out here."

San Palmos wasn't me, but I had a part in it, along with seven other drivers and wingmen. Our pictures were in the papers. Two officers had had to have protection details assigned to them for a year in case the Miami branch of the cartel's associates decided to take a shot at retribution. We were _very_ visible for a while after that bust - Chief was right, nobody in their right mind would put any of us undercover with our faces that easily traceable.

"So what's your conclusion then?"

"You had a shit run of luck and ended up here because your boss either took pity on you or he wanted to make a believer out of you. I haven't decided which yet."

"I'm leaning toward both." He laughed softly, his chair protesting madly as he moved his legs under the table. I hadn't noticed at what point his left hand had gone down to his lap but I wouldn't have been surprised to find out it was tucked inside his coat and palming something gunmetal grey. Did he think I was worth unlocking the infamous weapons cabinet for? I might have felt a little bit honored if he'd given me any indication that I worried him enough to merit arming up for the first time in a decade.

He slowly brought his hand back up to the table. Since when was he left handed? I had no idea why that seemed important, but it did somehow and my head went straight to which side of the bed he would prefer in the interest of having his dominant hand closest to -

He was staring at me like he could hear my thoughts and couldn't believe my head was that far out of the game.

"So...the fact that you thought I was here for a reason and had your boxers twisted up that tight about it means there _is_ a reason," I said with as much matter-of-fact as I could muster, as if he hadn't just potentially pointed a gun at me under my own kitchen table. "I've already sorted that it's about Andy so don't bother trying to deflect. You wouldn't be so bunged up about him being around me if he wasn't the obvious target. You sure as hell wouldn't be ready to shoot me for it."

The way his eyes narrowed told me I was right about that left hand under the table. But it was _on_ the table now, fingertips tapping slowly next to that open phone that I couldn't stop looking at. Something was off about it. The keypad seemed to have extra buttons.

"Cabel Murdock is finally going on trial and Andy is supposed to testify against him - which is why we're all a little bit nervous right now. The timing of your arrival was a bit...disconcerting."

To say I instantly forgot about the weird phone would be a profound understatement.

"Murdock?! Are you fucking kidding me?! The _east coast syndicate_ Murdock??"

"I take it you've heard of him."

"Holy _shit_ how is Andy tied up with _that_ guy?!"

"He was in their upper tier. Worked for him and Selino."

Dear god...Andy?? Selino and Murdock were infamous, their crime network incorporated literally every branch of organized fuckery there was, and it all centered around trafficking. Drugs were a big part of it, but their real power was tied up in the human side of it all. And Cabel Murdock was the so-called respectable face of the organization, heading up charity work and sponsoring local businesses while running a slave trade out of the back end of it all. He was a nightmare with a handsome face and a cheshire cat smile that would be the last thing you saw before he diced you up and dumped you in the bay. And he ran a _very_ smooth operation.

And Chief was telling me Andy had worked for him.

But _nothing_ was about to convince me Shag and Bag Burns was involved in the sale and export of women and children.

Just...no. I glanced back toward the hallway that led to the bedroom where I'd sent him to stay out of Chief's line of vision. The softly vibrating sound of snoring drifted into the silence that had fallen over the kitchen where Chief and I sat in our uncomfortable standoff, discussing terrible things possibly committed by the sweetest person either of us had ever met, with a weird phone with extra buttons laying on the table between us.

"Please tell me there was a reason."

Relief washed over me when Chief nodded and I realized I'd been so tensed up that it hurt to move. He must have seen me flinch and started to reach across the table for me, but he stopped himself and sat back. The concerned look on his face stayed, though.

"You okay? How's the back?"

"Yeah I'm good, just a bit twingey. You were getting ready to tell me something major, please do _not_ stop."

He got up and I thought for one panicky moment that he was going to walk out, but instead of heading for the door he got a mug out of the cabinet and poured himself some coffee, refilling the half empty one in front of me before he sat back down with a groan. Those fiery blue eyes met mine over the top of his cup and bad back or no, horrifying revelation or no, I'd have wrapped my legs around him right then and there if I thought for one second that wobbly table would hold us long enough to bother.

"The kid knows all the names of all the bosses, and not just the ones in New York." He tapped the side of his head. "He's got their faces and the faces of all their crews, you flash it and our boy in there can ID it. Which is why he's officially a dead man walking, and why we're sort of falling over ourselves trying to keep from pushing the button every time a truck backfires. We're tasked with keeping him alive until he can testify, because the Feds _really_ want Murdock."

"And he was in their organization?"

"Yeah, right up at the top, doing runner work for the big bosses. They thought he was, you know - " He made another gesture toward his head, different this time, and the look on his face strongly indicated he disapproved of it. "Simple. Harmless. So they trusted him, used him like a human camera because of that weird thing he's got, he'll look at something and never forget it. That was useful to them. Toward the end there they had him attending their meetings under the guise of being an assistant, but they were actually having him pick up names and details off the others, assuming he wouldn't understand what he was hearing. They had him right there in their inner circle, Murdock and Selino and two others. One of whom he killed."

Shit, there it was - the big ugly truth I'd known had to come out sooner or later. Didn't make it any less shocking though. "Geezus...Andy really did kill someone then - ?"

"Yeah, he did."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. What _does_ one say? I'd been holding to the hopeful assumption that the killer in question was Ted the donut guy, based on the limited presence of capable culprits that morning in the bakery when the subject first came up. To find out it was actually Andy...it was a little bit overwhelming and a whole lot unbelievable.

"None of this is adding up, Chief." That cute little twitch in his cheek every time I called him by something other than Tommy did its thing, prefacing a scowl that didn't worry me in the least. I had him talking and I wasn't about to let him get distracted by that perverse desire of his to hear me say his name. "What's the story. How did he get in with them? I'm here, I'm involved, you were apparently willing to shoot me in my own damn kitchen - you owe me at least enough details to make me feel better because I'll be honest with you, I'm a little bit freaked out that I've been sleeping with a killer."

He grimaced hard, but obviously didn't care to pause long enough to think too deeply about what I'd just said. Probably for the best, because he tended to go off the rails a bit when confronted with the hard facts about my relationship with his gopher.

Gopher and something of a tragic hero, as it was turning out.

“They were running a branch of their trafficking ring in Albany, snatching up homeless kids and shipping them out. Andy’s kid brother disappeared." He was staring at his hands, picking nervously at the bandage wrapped haphazardly around his injured index finger. I wondered for a second if it was the same bandage I had put on it. "The two of them, straight off the plane from Dublin, their mom buggered off and Andy - seventeen years old - quit school and was raising his brother. Brother doesn’t come home from school one day, Andy goes to the police, the NYPD talk him into going into this ring as a decoy for them because he's got this skill, right? He's sitting in their station lobby for an hour and by the time they call him in he's memorized every wanted poster, every name of every officer in the place, all of it right down to what the receptionist is wearing and what she said to her husband on the phone. Lightbulb goes on above the Captain's head to put this kid to work. Andy agrees to do this for them and they'll get his brother back, right? He's got perfect recall, the cops realize he can look at something once and it's in his head forever, every detail - that's a skill they can definitely use when it comes time to start ID'ing bosses." He stretched back in his chair, getting as comfortable as his big body could on the tailbone crimping hardwood. "Andy agrees on the pretense that that’s where his brother is and this'll help them find him, which is what they've told him. So he goes in, gets himself in with the help of someone the Feds have on the inside. Spends a couple years deep inside the network as a runner, working his way up till he's doing jobs for the four big guys, gathering all this intel for both sides. He's memorizing names and faces, dates, times, all this stuff for the Feds, while at the same time he's doing the same thing for the syndicate. Poor kid's head is full of so much evidence he stops sleeping because it won't settle. Plus, you know, he's seeing teenage girls and little kids being crated up and sold. But he stays, because his contact is telling him they have leads on his brother's whereabouts. And then - "

He stopped, slumping in his chair a little before suddenly standing up. It startled me and I jumped, but all he did was turn around and reach for the coffee pot. It was a welcome distraction, and as he refilled our cups I listened for the sound of Andy's snoring from the bedroom. A nervous little panic actually crept over me until I finally heard it.

Geezus. His story was spooking me.

"If you stop now I'm going to have to kill you."

He took a long swallow off his coffee and winced at the burn. "Yeah, we're to the plot twist. He finds out his brother’s body was found about three months after he made his agreement with the Feds. They’d kept the information from him to keep him working for them. Left him in the wolf den on a total fucking lie. So he flips the hell out, kills one of the big bosses that's using the girls for his own personal harem. So now he's fucked, right? NYPD pulls him out, the Feds hide him for a while, shuffle him around inside witness protection but he can ID the ringleaders, can't he? Syndicate's got inside people everywhere, he's never going to be safe, and then to top it all off Murdock puts a death warrant out on him when they flush out the other agent that got him in and the guy totally rolls on him being a plant. So the Feds put him in the fugitive program and he gets shipped here.”

I'm sure the blank look on my face was probably right up there in the top three most comical things Chief had ever had to look at, but to his credit he just raised his cup and took another long swig. And then he averted his eyes, because the righteous anger that had been flashing in them just moments ago was fading to something decidedly less fierce.

It was obvious he had a lot of really soft feelings for the guy snoring in the other room.

"So they can't protect him and decide to send him to the middle of Wombatpenis Wisconsin on the assumption that literally _no one_ would ever look here. Am I right? And now they've got Murdock so the prosecution is waking up the sleepers?"

He put his cup down with a short little laugh but didn't miss a beat. “Yeah. He's been here a long time, they sort of forgot about him until they started looking at the potential witness list just a few weeks ago. He became my problem back in 2012, he was just a kid. He’d dropped out of school to raise his brother so when he got here the department put him through classes, got him his GED, funded some college courses with the street tax money - " He caught my dropped jaw and shot me an _Oh get over yourself_ face. "Yeah I know, but there’s what, five streets in this town? We have overages to hide. So the kid graduates with a degree in associate pharmacology and immediately becomes useful to us.”

“How is that useful to a copshop in a town with one criminal? And what is he, a goddamn Changeling? Makes himself indispensibly necessary to everyone he comes across?"

"Hey, doubt nothing. That _is_ an Irish myth thing you know. You ever seen a real human that tall before?"

"I'm sure the Feds were pissing themselves trying to figure out how to keep him from standing out in the crowd, yeah. He doesn't exactly blend.”

A thump drew our attention and we both sat silent for a few seconds, staring in the general direction of the bedroom like a couple of tired parents trying to determine whether or not a noise from the nursery merits actually getting up. The distinctive loping shuffle of Andy's awkward big-footed walk echoed through the hardwood floor. Chief rubbed his eyes and I was reminded yet again that the man seemed exhausted. _God_ I wanted him to stand up, walk over to my side of the table, hold his hand out and wait for me to take it. After that things were a bit murky, since Andy was currently occupying the bedroom and all.

Dammit. Sex and a nap seemed like exactly what Chief needed, and I wasn't horribly averse to it myself.

“He’s our drug sniffer. Since, you know, the dog is useless." He waved toward the bedroom and I watched my little fantasy go poof. "And he created a lot of jobs, it was good for the local economy. Nobody was complaining once they were told they'd have an active police force that didn't have to drive all the way over from Turnbull every time some little old lady spotted Wilson climbing over her fence."

I may have snorted into my coffee at the drug sniffer bit, because of course he was. No wonder they never deputized him before my arrival, he'd have had to arrest himself twice a day. But he was definitely an authority on his specialty subject, you had to give him that.

And then I caught the other part and choked a little.

"Are you telling me this department is only here to protect Andy?"

Chief nodded.

"We were shut down eight years ago when Weemeetwa was annexed into the Turnbull township, the PD there was going to be expanded to cover our territory with the highway patrol covering the other half. They offered me early retirement or a position on the Turnbull force. I opted for retirement. We were packing up when the Feds showed up and recommissioned me and Cree and Sarah for this 'special detail of indeterminate duration'. We were the entirety of the force here until then. The rest of these guys were shipped in from...wherever."

I stared hard at his face, but there wasn't even the slightest hint of insincerity on it anywhere. He wasn't bullshitting me. "You're not kidding. Oh my god. This is for real?"

"Have you ever seen this many muscleheads in one place? Don't tell me you haven't noticed nearly everybody in this station is either the size of a Clydesdale or has a very particular skill set that a town like Weemeetwa doesn't really call for." I must have been staring blankly at him from that point on because he started fighting back a _very_ amused little grin. "Cree and Sarah came with the deal, they were my one condition for staying. Kevin was brought in from SWAT. Cade was a decommissioned SEAL. Ted too. Special Forces. Saint joined us later when he came back from college but he had to go to Quantico to train for the job, they basically made a bodyguard out of him. Everybody here is highly trained for one thing and one thing only, and that's keeping that kid alive until he can testify against Murdock and his stable of overlords."

I was getting a lot of mileage out of my blank stare. And Chief, bless him, took advantage of my temporary wordlessness to just keep going. "They put us back on the job as a cover story. We were supposed to continue as an active police department, because who's going to think there's anything odd about that? They made an announcement in the Sunday paper that the state had kicked in for our payroll and we were back on the job with some reinforcements coming. Kev and the others start showing up. Andy arrives four days later with a backpack and a cover story about being a college dropout hitchhiking across the states till he ran out of cash right here in - you guessed it - Weemeetwa. The script called for me to hire him as the station gopher, the town provided him with living accommodations, we put him through community college, he settled in and we all just sort of...orbit around him. And he's right here, inside the sturdiest building in the county, surrounded by seven specially trained officers from sunup till sundown every day. It's ideal, really."

Ideal...I wasn't completely sold on that, but I had to give it to them, Chief and his crew were good at pretending to be something they weren't. So good that I'd accepted that a silent mountain of a man with the body of a pro wrestler was simply a dispatch officer, that a retired SEAL was nothing other than a shy baker, and that an entire department in the middle of a frozen midwestern tundra full of overly competent incompetents was just...business as usual for the place. It was the perfect cover because everything was already so whack about the town, a few more weird people populating it barely caught your notice.

And Andy fit right in for the simple fact that he _didn't_ fit in.

"You guys are kinda brilliant, you know it?"

Chief may have been a little bit surprised at hearing those words come from me, but the shy little smile that popped up on those nice lips of his turned penitent quicker than I could enjoy it. "Look Morley, about that little, uh..." I knew he was trying to apologize for his outburst earlier but I didn't feel like making it any easier on him, so I just sat there nodding in encouragement for him to continue. "I've got a bit of a - " He made a gesture that seemed to be vaguely implying his skull; he seemed genuinely embarrassed so I decided to show him a tiny bit of compassion and cut him off like it wasn't a big deal, because in light of everything he'd just told me, it actually wasn't. I figured if I did it right I could harvest a little more information from him while I was at it.

"A brain injury, I know. Andy told me. Was it from the time Creeley slammed you into the wall?"

"Yeah. They thought it was just a concussion but it never got better. I get these...impulses, I guess. They're not usually so extreme but you seem to be a trigger."

I would have loved to jump onto that with both feet and start dissecting it, but there was an explanation forthcoming that I wasn't about to miss for the world. "Punching Andy was one of those impulses?"

"Yeah."

"And the jealousy? Is that one of your impulses or is that for real?" He didn't answer, and something told me I'd be waiting a long time if I expected him to. "Okay, well I think you're good with Andy, I don't believe he'd hold anything against you even if you truly deserved it."

"He's a good kid."

There it was again, that heavy, itchy little silence that settled in between us every time we stopped talking. I had questions, so damn many questions, but Chief had already handed me way more than I'd been expecting. It was more than I wanted, to be honest. Andy...geezus, the poor guy. I wondered if that little snap that had sent him into a killing rage had damaged him irreparably, if maybe that was why he seemed emptyheaded and blank sometimes. And the little blanket that had belonged to his brother, the way he pushed it up under his face when he slept, how Chief had come back to his house to get it that night when he'd been taken to wherever their safe place was.

The way they looked after him was unbearably sweet. The fact that he _needed_ to be looked after was heartbreaking. Knowledge is heavy sometimes, and right about then I was definitely feeling a bit smothered by the weight of it all.

"Someone in this division has eyes on Andy at all times. _At all times_. You've never been alone with him, Greta."

I didn't want to question what that meant...I felt like I knew already, anyway. Small towns were by nature bad about everybody being all up in everybody else's business in the best of times - if you walk from your bedroom to the kitchen in your underwear, your favorite frilly unmentionables brand will be the hot subject for discussion at the next book club meeting. Throw in a Federal witness and you can safely assume there are more binoculars and surveillance gear than actual people and the subject will now be what position you favor while you're banging the Federal witness into oblivion.

"You were so damn drunk that first night when you met him, you never even realized Cade was sitting two barstools down and followed you back to the house."

Yeah, sorta what I was figuring.

"Geezus fuck, was he under the bed? Do _not_ answer that." I got up on the pretense of refilling my cup, but the truth was that my back was killing me, I wanted to break that goddamn hot blue stare Chief had fixed on me, and my temper was just a little bit rankled at the prospect of having been spied on since the minute I'd arrived in this pisshole town. A pisshole town I was beginning to develop a tolerance for, just a little bit. That was probably pissing me off more than anything else. "Wait a second, you all seemed shocked when you found out the next morning."

"He didn't deem you an immediate threat so he didn't tell anybody. We do respect Andy's privacy as much as we can. And he's...well, lets just say you weren't his first drunken hookup. We tend to look the other way a lot."

"I probably wasn't even his first drunken hookup that weekend."

"Try that night."

"What?!"

He started laughing, and for the first time since the backyard party on Friday night the tense thing between us eased up enough for us to look - really _look_ \- at each other. Chief's face had suddenly lost that terse look of authority, and for one brief moment he let his eyes drift down to the front of my sweater.

"I'm kidding, Morley. You are fun to rile up though."

Okay, I was still a little tense. I crossed my arms over my chest and tried the chin-out thing for some boldness, but it was a fail all around. His eyes seemed to have some mystical ability to kick the vinegar right out of me. "You know what, I can't even be mad about it. You guys are just doing your job and to be honest I don't think I've ever seen a group so dedicated to their assignment. I'm impressed." He didn't say anything, and while he sat there playing with his coffee cup I decided to go for one last bit of intel. He was in a giving mood and I wasn't above taking for as long as it lasted, and god knew he wasn't this generous often. "Can I ask you one question? Why the hell do you keep sending him out with me if there was even the remotest possibility that I was a plant?"

He shrugged. "Just a hunch, I guess."

"A hunch about what?"

"You didn't kill him or hand him over to anyone that first night. He was drunk and obviously didn't suspect anything. It would have been easy - and you didn't do it. So we just kept watching you on the assumption that you were okay but...you know, just in case."

"Has someone had me in their sights this whole time?"

His silence was plenty answer enough.

"Have they?? Who?! Is it Creeley? Because I can't imagine Creeley having the restraint to not have shot me as I was getting off the plane."

"Morley, listen to me. You can become a huge liability to us if we're not careful. On top of the whole inside agent thing we also had to consider the possibility that you were here from the upper offices of the Feds to check up on us, you know...test our setup, see if we were on top of things. And then you rolled in with a hangover and immediately started fucking up - "

"Thanks, thanks Chief, that's just great, yes I'm aware that I haven't been at my best."

He was getting a little bit frustrated with me, I could tell. "You know what I mean. We weren't very impressed...and yeah, we considered the possibility that that was the plan, that you were really well trained and the M.O. was for you to catch us off guard with an incompetent act. So we're sort of all over the place with you, half of us think you're faking the screwup shtick and the other half thinks you're really that big up a fuckup and _none_ of us can agree on exactly what to do about you."

All I could do was stare at him. But I'd asked for this, so I was going to have to sit still through it even if it put me in therapy. "You really are determined to send me back to the bottle, aren't you? Let me guess. Sarah and Cree want to drop me in the reservoir, Kevin couldn't care less either way, Cade and Saint...wait a second, everywhere me and Andy go we see Cade. I figured it was just the fact that it's impossible to get away from anyone in this place, but that's his job, isn't it?"

Chief's eyes had left my face and were looking behind me, and by the mixture of concern and annoyance in them I knew there was only one thing he could be looking at. I turned around to see Andy at the end of the hallway, still in my baby blue bathrobe and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Your bed, Greta. It's so damn small."

I turned back to Chief and glared at him.

"Yeah, while we're discussing fuckups and what to do about people, how about we talk about the baby crib you set me up with? Or how about the non-negotiable fail situations you keep sending me out on at work, or maybe this whole whack-ass jealousy thing that you still haven't explained your way out of?"

"Morley, can you stop talking for a minute? Sixty seconds, that's all I ask."

"Nope."

"The bed was a joke, okay? I'll own up to that, though you gotta admit - " He looked at Andy and I swear to god the man was struggling not to bust up laughing. " - it is pretty funny. And get used to chasing Wilson around because it is _way_ too amusing watching you do your best with him and the crew would kill me if I stopped assigning him to you."

That cinched it. The first time Chief and I had sex - if we ever got around to it - it was going to be hate sex all the way. On my foot-and-a-half-wide toddler bed with the goddamn safety rails on the side, which wasn't a bad feature considering the simple fact that somebody was going to end up on the floor without it.

"So you're just doing all this to be mean to me."

"Yep."

"You dick."

He'd apparently decided our little discussion was over because he got up and slugged back the last of his coffee, grimacing at the bitter bite of that last lukewarm inch as he flashed me a wink and started for the front room. On his way past he clapped Andy on the shoulder and put his face close to his.

"You okay kid?"

"Yeah Chief, I'm good."

They both nodded, that little head thing that men do when they don't want to acknowledge the depth lurking underneath whatever they just skimmed across, and as he was heading for the door I remembered something important that had been poking at the back of my brain for a while. I caught up to him as he was stepping out onto the porch and grabbed his elbow to stop him. He turned back around, looking down at my hand where I was holding onto him.

I'm not so sure the shiver that rippled through me was actually from the cold snow blowing in around us. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure it wasn't. This wasn't the time though, and with Andy in the house it definitely wasn't the place. I checked behind me to make sure he was well out of hearing range, then got as close as I dared to Chief and lowered my voice to just above a whisper. I didn't know if what I was about to say was important or not, but something had felt distinctly off about the whole situation ever since the day it happened and I didn't want to alarm Andy unless it was absolutely necessary. The poor guy had been through enough and he wasn't anywhere near the edge of the woods yet.

"I have something to tell you that I think you might be interested in. A couple of days ago Hawk called me."

"Hawk?"

"Paul Hawkins, my Captain in LA. When his contact picture flashed on my phone I swear Andy seemed like he recognized him."

The relaxed smile he'd had just a moment ago vanished as quickly as it had arrived. "Are you sure?"

"No, I mean I wasn't looking right at him, but he acted like he'd seen him before. And now that I think about it, Hawk seemed interested in him too. Kept asking about him."

"Geezus Morley why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"It didn't stick out at the time and I was distracted. We were returning a truck we stole."

Chief's face fell to such a convoluted combination of confusion, dismay, and outright _what the fuck??_ that I instantly felt bad about telling him. Maybe it was nothing - maybe Hawk was developing a sense of jealousy himself. Maybe he was genuinely interested in my new temporary work situation. Maybe I'd imagined it. Maybe the recognition on Andy's face had been a mistake.

So many maybes...and not a single one of them solid enough to hinge Andy's safety on. I saw it on Chief's face then, the absolute hardfast resolve of a man prepared to burn the world to the ground to do his job. I knew he'd do whatever he had to to protect Andy. But I also knew he was a middle aged broken-down ex hockey player with a bad back and creaky knees and a tendency toward forgetfulness, and he knew it too.

But if anything was going to happen it would likely happen soon, and according to my superior officer back in LA, I was going to be here for a year - at least. I gave Chief's elbow a squeeze.

"Let me know what I can do to help. I've got time."

He nodded, and then he may or may not have whispered _Thank you_ as he turned to leave...but the wind took a violent rush through the bushes along the front of the house just then and if the words were actually uttered, they were blown away before I got to hear them.

I watched Chief walk to his Jeep, fascinated by that subtle little limp of his that somehow only made him about a thousand percent sexier.

Damn him.

I shut the door, wondering if I was ever going to get over him. A week wasn't a long time by any means, but apparently it was long enough to get someone under your skin good and proper.

Andy held his arms open to me when I turned around and I went straight into them, burrowing in against his thin chest inside my bathrobe, inhaling the warm clean scent of him as he swayed with me. I'd never felt so twisted up in my life; Joe's death had been a gut wrenching rollercoaster of emotions, but this was different. Andy was alive and he was standing right in front of me, smiling down at me like he hadn't actually lived through the nightmare Chief had just described, unfazed and ceaselessly gentle hearted and seemingly untouched by the evil he'd fallen into. I envied him his blissful contentment every bit as much as I pitied the tragedy of him. It made my heart hurt, but as he wrapped those ridiculously long arms around me and started to hum against the top of my head, I realized there were two sorts of people in this world.

The ones who made it, and the ones who didn't.

I knew which category Andy was in. I just hoped he could stay in it.

I had a year to make myself useful, and for the second time in my life I knew exactly what I wanted to do. My first epiphany had been years ago when I'd realized my love for going fast was actually a skill that the LAPD was willing to exchange a paycheck for. The second had occurred not five minutes ago while I was watching Chief get in his car. For the next three hundred and sixty-whatever days I planned on helping that man and the rest of the Weenieroaster PD keep this goofy stringbean alive and well, and in my spare time I was going to make Chief Tommy Davis's life a living hell with only one way to stop the misery.

He'd have to work out for himself what that was.

Something told me he knew, though.

_To be continued..._


	30. Interstate 94 to Second Base

At 7:45 that morning my phone shrieked out a text from Chief.

_Take the day off. Get some rest._

He didn't have to tell me twice.

"Hey Cree let me out."

Wednesday started pretty much the way I was beginning to expect most mornings would - bursting into the station in a swirling vortex of cold and wind and snow, cursing at the bitter chill and stomping with the day's shitty weather swirling in around me, Sarah yelling at me to close the door, Kevin doing his invisibility thing in the middle of the room with a blank look on his face and Andy standing inside the holding cell looking like he'd just shot himself in the foot.

I wish I could say that last one was a surprise, but it really wasn't. Creeley shoved past me and took one look at him before shaking his head and going on about his business. "What are you doin' in the tank, dumbass?"

"Hobo locked me in."

"Yeah? Well seein' as Hobo's an officer and you're not, I'm gonna defer to his judgment and leave you in there."

Cue Andy whining, which would have been excruciating if I hadn't given up drinking halfway through Tuesday out of respect for the pain meds. The only thing keeping it from being truly obnoxious was his softly lilting accent, which I was coming to realize kept him out of a lot of trouble he probably deserved to be in. "Come on man, I was makin' the bed and he bumped the door shut."

Cree didn't even look up. "Well the way I see it, Lieutenant Hobo of the Weemeetwa PD made an arrest and you're just gonna have to take it up with the Chief."

I put my coat and gloves away while the two of them argued. It was obvious Andy wasn't getting out of that cell any time soon; as far as I knew the only key to it in existence resided on Creeley's key ring and the resident pickpocket was standing on the wrong side of the barred door. He was probably carrying anyway. He shot me a pleading look but I just shrugged, because there was no way in hell I was going to engage Cree this early in the day. I'd be damned if I was going to get close enough to him to put my hand in his pocket, either.

Chief made his morning appearance while they bickered, storming out of his office like he always did, muttering "Come with me Morley" on his way through while giving me a _Let's go_ gesture and grabbing his coat off the rack. I snatched my own coat off the back of my chair and headed out after him, ignoring Sarah's shout to shut the door because - well, frankly, because screw Sarah. I'd been clued in on the true identity of the entire station, there was nothing she could do now to shut me out. My induction had come from the Chief himself and I was a thousand percent prepared to shove that in any face that challenged me from here on, including hers.

And my brother was arriving later in the day, so my nerves were already simultaneously shot and steeled at eight a.m.

"Where we going?"

"You're taking me to get that coffee I've been waiting a week for."

"Excuse me Sir but isn't Andy supposed to do that?"

The look he hurled at me actually made me stop where I stood, on the other side of the car waiting with my hand up for him to throw me the keys. He just stared at me for a minute, then glanced down the street at two guys who were pelting each other with snowballs on the courthouse lawn. From the sound of it things were about to turn ugly, but good lord willing I would be in Ted's donut shop ordering a steaming hot to-go cup before any blood was shed. Let Cade and Cree handle it.

"I keep hearing about your driving skills, I'd kind of like to see them for myself."

"Really, Sir?"

His grimace was one for the books. "Morley, are you _ever_ going to stop calling me that?"

"No Sir. Not unless you decide one night under entirely different circumstances to request it."

He leaned on the top of the car, looking up at the sky for a minute while he puzzled out what I'd just said. "So if I asked you to, you wouldn't."

"Correct, Sir."

He stared at me for a long time, then threw me the keys. "Get in the car."

"Yes Sir."

Cruising town with Chief in the passenger seat was an experience I wouldn't have cared to repeat if I'd had my own choice in the matter. But I didn't, and he sat there silently sipping his coffee and just as silently judging my performance, casting little sideways glances at me while I obeyed every posted speed limit and eased up gently on each stop sign to keep the big unwieldy Taurus from sliding on the icy streets. It was obvious he was waiting for something to happen, but apparently disaster required Andy to be sitting in that seat and we spent twenty minutes just sort of drifting around in a mutually uncomfortable state of nonspeaking before I finally decided I'd had enough. Chief was my prisoner for as long as he was in my assigned vehicle...might as well make good use of the situation. There was ice to be played on, a nice shiny new sheet of maximum slickness just begging me to floorboard it. And I might have had an ulterior motive behind my insatiable desire to scare Chief into going back to the station.

"My brother is coming in this afternoon, is it alright if I take off to go pick him up in - whatever that town is. You know, where the airport is."

"Grand Forks. What's your brother doing coming here?" Chief was sitting there looking at me intently with a curious little smile on his face, and I knew what his problem was. And it annoyed me more than just a little bit.

"What, you didn't think I had a brother? I do have family you know, I didn't spawn upstream. There are people on this earth who love me."

He nodded, still with that odd little smile. God...I suddenly wanted to do one of two things, and neither of them involved driving around town in a Taurus. "I never really thought about it, to be honest."

I couldn't tell if he was being purposefully irritating or if it just came to him naturally, but it rankled me a little bit so I started easing the car into the next speed bracket to see if he would notice. He didn't, or if he did he didn't let on - which seemed to be his standard method for annoying the shit out of me. And it worked, which I was sure he knew. I was just about to take a corner just a wee bit too fast with the intention of making him spill his coffee when my phone started to ring. I ignored it and just like it always did, the universe delivered a swift kick to the crotch all wrapped up in a pretty screaming bow of indeterminate nationality.

Fortunately this time it wasn't Cree spilling his impressive treasure trove of vocabularic upchuck.

_Hey hermana I'm here, I caught an earlier flight. Goddamn there's a lot of snow. I know you're at work so I'm gonna catch a cab. See you in a bit._

Chief stared expectantly at me from the passenger seat until the stilted, slightly frantic sounding digital voice finished reading off the text. I looked over at him. "What?"

"You gonna let him take a cab?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"There's one cab driver in the entirety of Grand Forks that'll come all the way out here and you've met him. You must not like your brother very much."

I thought back to my trip from the airport - it had taken forever, the driver seemed to have an aversion to motion itself, and the 1980's-era boombox on the front seat had played a steady stream of endlessly droning Garrison Keillor skits for the entirety of the forty-seven mile trip. The thought of Ant putting up with that for more than a few minutes almost made me laugh out loud.

I'd have paid to see it, to be honest.

Chief suddenly reached up to put his coffee on the dashboard, then unbuckled his seatbelt and turned around to get something from the back seat. When he settled back into place I looked over to see what he was messing with and my heart, I swear to you, skipped about seven beats. He was attaching the speed harness to his seatbelt. When he finally looked up he saw me watching him as he buckled the shoulder straps, and pointed to the interstate sign coming up on our left.

"Well come on, let's go get him."

Not gonna lie, the sight of him buckling himself into that harness sent something hot and quivery straight down to my stomach - but sexual bondage fantasies aside, I knew it was the implication of him putting on a heavy-duty piece of safety equipment in a moving vehicle that was responsible for the sudden fact that I couldn't stop squirming under the steering wheel.

He was prepping for speed.

"Sir, may I ask why you're putting that on?"

I knew what I wanted him to say, but when he actually said it I swear I heard myself whimper. I hadn't been granted any wishes since my arrival in this godforsaken place, but the Djinn assigned to my case seemed to have finally woken up and poked her head out of the bottle to take a tentative look around.

"Show me what you can do, Officer Morley of Division 25." He made a _Go_ gesture in the general vicinity of the long straight interstate road ahead of us. "You like to go fast, so go fast." He must have seen the hopeful disbelief on my face and sat back all leisurely and unconcerned, tightening the straps across his chest and sealing my fate. "Unless of course you've lost your nerve."

Oh no. Oh _hell_ no, he didn't say that. Not to me, designated driver of Team One, the wheelpilot who played chicken with Sal McCluskey's chauffer on the 412 and never even blinked despite my wingman practically climbing out the window. My nerve was what I was _known_ for. My nerve had gotten me the highest position available in Division 25 at the youngest age in the history of the LAPD. And it had kept the accident that sent me here from involving more vehicles than it had...vehicles full of innocent civilians that I ultimately decided, in that brief heartbeat of a moment, were worth myself and my partner maybe dying for.

It was probably also my nerve that had taken me out of that final equation.

"Excuse me _what?"_

"The reports on that accident are pretty hard to read, I mean...I've never personally been upside down in a motor vehicle before but I would imagine it's enough to put the fear of God in you."

I stared at him, confused for a second about whether he'd been listening to what was going on inside my head. "What are you - I beg your pardon _Sir_ but my nerve is just fine, thanks."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Then lets go." He reached across and held his hand out, palm up. "Gimme your phone."

"What for?"

"I'm going to text your brother back and tell him we're on our way so he doesn't get in Cosmo's cab."

I handed it to him, but not without a healthy dose of apprehension. Apprehension that I overcame the second he started to type.

"What's his name again? Anthony - ?"

He didn't get to finish his question before I fucking floorboarded it, slamming that handsome head of his back against the headrest with all the G force the groaning twenty year old V6 had to offer.

The long, straight, mostly empty interstate was perfect for jackassing around, but I kept it straight and concentrated on getting the old cruiser to maximum speed until it became obvious Chief wasn't the least bit afraid of going fast. I was going to have to pull something more interesting out of the bag, maybe slap him around with it a little.

"Permission to freeslide Sir?"

"Permission to what?"

The last half of his final word went up an octave when I took it upon myself to assume permission granted, and spun the wheel on the third count of a slightly overzealous acceleration - which meant, in less technical terms, that I sent us into a sideways slide that doused the car in finely shaved ice shooting up from the tires and would have thrown Chief against his door if he hadn't been wearing that harness. The criss-crossed straps over his chest held him tightly against his seat, but gravity and centrifugal force still pulled him hard enough to the right to compress the breath right out of his lungs. The little _whoosh_ sound as his ribcage deflated brought me roughly the same amount of joy a kid would be feeling on a particularly generous Christmas morning.

"Permission to do a baker's dozen Sir?"

"What the fuck is a baker's dozen??"

"Donuts, Sir."

I didn't wait for his answer again and put us into a flat fishtailing spin, braking just enough to bring the back of the car around in a beautifully executed circle while the front wheels held relative position - and then I gassed it again, sending us into another power spin in reverse of the first. Snow was flying, I was fighting the wheel hard and the big Taurus was fighting right back, but the thrill of being in control again - just barely - of a powerful piece of machinery was exhilarating in a way that nothing, including sex, had ever touched.

It was making me kinda horny, not gonna lie.

In the middle of our third rotation I looked over at Chief while I fought the wheel. He was whiteknuckling the dashboard, but to his credit he didn't make a sound. Not that he was ever in any danger - aside from the simple fact that I knew what I was doing and donuts were child's play, he was wearing a five-point harness that Formula 5 racing drivers commonly wear on dangerous tracks. A triple end over end roll would have barely shifted him in his seat. He was safe as a baby in grandma's lap, maybe getting bounced a little but always in the firm grip of security.

Which was why I wanted so badly to shake him up, just a little. Like when grandma pretends she's going to drop you, just to see the look of shock and terror on your cute little face before she pulls you back up and you realize she had her arms around you the whole time.

"Is there any coffee still in that cup?"

He looked at me and then down at the cup sitting nestled in the holder on the console, and nodded briefly.

"Roll your window down."

He looked confused but obeyed, and once the window was down far enough I grabbed the cup and tossed it out. He shot me a scolding look as the window went back up.

"You know I'm gonna have to cite you for littering, right?"

"Better than walking into the airport looking like you pissed your pants."

"Why, what are you about to - ?"

He barely had the words out before I let go of the wheel and we broadslid into a massive snowdrift along the side of the pavement, exploding a storm of white that pretty much covered the entire vehicle and sent everything inside flying into the floorboard on his side. And then with a whining chug and sudden silence, the engine died.

"Shit, it wasn't supposed to do that." I turned the ignition while Chief sat there giving me a look that made it clear he wasn't impressed. Shaken just a little, but nothing beyond a little teeth grinding. "Hold on, it just needs a minute to settle all its fluids. How are yours, by the way?"

"Morley, I'm not walking back to town."

"You won't have to, I got this." I gave the key another turn, heart sinking as the engine whined and refused to turn over. "Just...give it a minute. She's an old girl, she's probably just tired."

Chief crossed his arms over his chest and turned so that he was facing me, leaning back against his door. It was unnerving knowing those fiery blue eyes of his were locked onto me while I sat there looking like an incompetent idiot, but this was my life now and I was going to have to learn to live with it. Chief staring me down was as much of a thrill as it was a chastisement, and after a full week of it I knew I could cope with it as long as I didn't look at him.

We sat there in silence for a handful of very long seconds until that coping ability went right out the same window his coffee had gone.

"Why do you guys have twenty year old vehicles anyway? What if you had to actively pursue someone out here, on the interstate?"

"We wouldn't. That's Turnbull's job." He pointed out the snow-covered windshield toward the road. "Highway patrol has jurisdiction out here, we don't go any further than Marker 18."

I snorted, irritated that the car was making a fool out of me while I cranked the key and pumped the gas, trying not to flood the ancient intake valves. "Marker 18, yeah let me tell you a little story about Marker 18. That place is a fucking joke, I was told weird things were gonna happen out there but the only thing I saw was a llama and an outhouse and Andy doing coin tricks to keep me from falling asleep."

"Morley - "

I gave the ignition another try and felt my temper rising as the engine made an unpleasant grinding noise and fell silent. "And another thing, your whole department is a joke, I know you're not even a real PD but _geezus_ you keep sending your number one priority out into the field like you're _trying_ to get him killed, I'm starting to think you're all working for the syndicate because if I was here to kill Andy I could have done it about fourteen times already, but _I wouldn't even have to_ _because you seem to be trying to off him yourself!"_

Another turn of the ignition, another gasping grind.

"Are you done?"

"NO I'm not done, I have about forty-seven more things on my bitch list with twelve sub-categories and a few dozen bullet points and you're gonna hear every last one of them - " I gave the engine one more hard crank and stomped on the gas like I was having a tantrum, but just as I was about to do it all again Chief reached over and took the key out of the ignition. _"What_ are you - ??"

"Shut up Morley."

"Excuse me SIR but I have a _lot_ more to say - "

Whatever I thought was so important and needed saying sort of just...stopped being quite so important the moment Chief leaned across the console and put his mouth against mine. It wasn't a particularly deep kiss, and it certainly wasn't passionate or earthshaking, but god help me it got _into_ me. I felt it all the way down to my frozen toes inside my soggy boots, and then it moved back up and settled somewhere in the general vicinity of my midsection where it just sort of...percolated. Why I was thinking about Andy's coffee pot at that point was beyond me, but as Chief sat back and blew a foggy breath out while I just sat there staring at him with my mouth open, one thought formed into crystal clarity in my slightly spinny head.

I wanted another one of those.

"Chief - ?"

"Yeah."

"Permission to ask what the fuck that was?"

He laughed a little, but it was an uncomfortable laugh with a lot of embarrassment and maybe a little bit of regret behind it. "I was looking for your off switch."

My turn to laugh. If he'd found anything, I was sorry to report that it was likely the opposite switch from the one he was hunting.

"Sir?"

"Geezus Morley, how many times am I going to have to tell you not to call me that?"

"Well let's see, _Sir_ \- I'm going to be here for another three hundred and fifty whatever days, I figure that's at least three Sirs per day so you're looking at a metric shit ton of irritating mock-subordinate behavior before I go home. Or you could just..." I shifted around in my seat to face him, wincing as the weathered leather squeaked under my butt. "...you know, send me home now. We _are_ going to the airport, if we don't freeze to death before the car gets its shit together."

He shifted around to face me, making pretty much the same face I'd made as his seat squeaked rudely. It was like an awkward mating call between the driver's seat and the passenger seat, crude and absurd to anyone watching the documentary but making perfect sense to the potential couple in question. Sort of like...

Me and Chief.

Geezus. We were as ludicrous as that bird of paradise mating dance video on NatGeo.

And there we sat, looking at each other across no more than three feet of space, but it might as well have been a mile. Because I was an emotionally stunted trauma case with apparent dominance issues and Chief was...well, he was the same obviously, just on the other end of the spectrum. We were each other's opposite number. But damn when our mouths stopped sniping long enough to make quiet contact it was astonishingly good, and I wondered if he wanted more of it as badly as I did.

"I think you've got control issues," he finally said with just enough authority in his voice to remind me that that was my boss sitting over there. "It all fits. You like to drive, you're in control of a vehicle, it does what you tell it to do. But sometimes, like now, it flips you the bird and refuses to bend to your will, and that gets you all out of sorts. Same with your life - you're probably a good person as long as things are going the way you want them to, but the minute something goes off the rails you go off with it. And right now things are so far off the script for you, you're just about one more unexpected event away from a total meltdown."

"Is that right?"

"Yeah that's right."

"And what makes you the expert in human psychology suddenly?"

"Kevin."

"Excuse me _what?"_

He laughed, that dark little chuckle that was starting to give me hormonal regulatory problems. Wet pants, that's what it was giving me. "Kevin. He does stress therapy."

"Kevin. Kevin from the _station_. Gigantic invisible guy with the dispatch mic, supposedly former SWAT, that guy?" He nodded, but didn't offer any explanation - I was going to have to bite, and fortunately I had no problem doing just that. "Okay, so why does Kevin do stress therapy? He's gotta be the most chill landmass I've ever seen in my life."

"I mean he's certified. People go to him for stress problems. He's a weekend therapist."

"You have _got_ to be kidding me."

I stared out at the heavy snow that was accumulating on the hood of the car. Kevin was a therapist, Cree did event calendars for the library ladies and remembered everybody's birthdays, Andy was a Federal Witness who'd worked for the biggest crime syndicate on the east coast...if Chief had told me Sarah was the former First Lady of Scotland I would have had no reason to doubt him at this point. Absolutely nothing about this place made sense. And it was getting damn cold with the car engine off.

I turned back to him.

"Okay, so what would Doctor Kevin say about this situation?"

"He would say...that you should stop talking."

"Yeah? Why's that."

His eyes dropped to my mouth for a brief second.

"Because it's hard to kiss someone who keeps flapping their lips."

We stared hard into each other's eyes for what felt like an interminable amount of time. It was hard not breaking the contact to look away; Chief's eyes were that insane shade of hot/cold blue that made me think of a frozen sea suddenly set aflame by a lightning strike, and damned if it wasn't outright painful to stare into them for any stretch longer than just a few seconds. Because Chief didn't blink, and the burn was real.

He leaned toward me, tilting his head just enough to imply I should come forward and help him out a little. I leaned in to meet him halfway across the console between our seats when Creeley's gruff voice blasted in over the radio.

_"Wake up Unit One. What are we supposed to do about the meetin' with Red, Chief? He's gonna come in here in a second and go sickhouse on our asses."_

Chief sighed the longsuffering sigh of a man who's been cockblocked so many times he wouldn't know what to do if he ever actually managed to score. Snatching the handset off the cradle, he shook his head and took a deep breath. "This is Unit Two, Cree. _You're_ in Unit One. Tell him I'll be back in a couple of hours and will send him the report tonight. Reschedule the meeting, would ya?"

_"I dunno, I like my ass the way it is, Chief."_

"It's a good ass, Cree. This is on me, I'll talk to him when I get in."

_"You're a dead man, but roger that. Is the Great One there?"_

"Yeah."

_"Tell her she sucks. No context."_

Chief looked over at me.

"Thanks Creeley," I said loud enough for him to hear me. "Your ass is a little on the saggy side though if you ask me."

_"I'm not askin' you. But I seen ya lookin'."_

"In your dreams."

_"It's okay, you can look at it. It's natural. Don't fight your primal instincts."_

Chief yanked the handset away from me and hit the relay button to cut him off. "Okay that's enough, reschedule with Red and hold down the fort till I get there. Out."

I stared at him, trying hard not to laugh. "You guys really answer to that psycho Red Handoverhand, whatever his name is?"

"Hanrahan. Yeah, we do."

"Is he a setup by the Feds too?"

Chief shook his head, laughing a little as he toyed with the coiled cable to the handset. "Naw, Red's for real. Been Mayor for - god, longer than I've lived here."

"Does he even speak English?"

"Not much." He put the receiver on its cradle and shifted toward me again. "He sure likes you though."

I couldn't stop the outburst of laughter, which sounded more like a frustrated pause right before the complete screaming meltdown we all figured was coming. "He's insane. I'm gonna get a restraining order on him even if he's the guy I have to petition to get one."

"He is."

"Yeah, I sorta figured that."

Another long pause. The windows were starting to fog up as the temp inside the vehicle struggled to maintain enough warmth to keep us alive. It was failing and I felt myself shiver violently just as Chief shifted in his seat again with a resoundingly rude squeal of denim on old leather.

"It's gettin' kinda cold in here, Officer Morley. You wanna try that ignition again, or should we - " He stopped talking and god help me, I couldn't have stopped myself from glancing at the back seat if my life had depended on it. There was a soft but slightly wicked little grin tugging at the left corner of his mouth.

"What's that custom the Inuit have, the shared body heat thing?"

"They rub noses, Morley. Transfers heat from one exposed extremity to another quickly without anyone having to remove any layers."

"Oh."

He leaned a little further across the console but kept his hands on his own side of the vehicle. "It's the breath that does it. Your breath warms the other person's mouth while your noses are together, and vice versa."

"Oh is that what does it." I leaned in a little, waiting to see how much further he was willing to come across the console.

"No, that's not what does it. I'm lying. They don't really even rub noses."

I almost - _almost_ \- wrote the whole wretched encounter off as a fever dream and blamed it on the muscle relaxers, but Chief definitely had the keys in his hand and I was definitely stuck in a crotchety old Taurus with him, and our breath was definitely fogging up the windows. It was also definitely getting damn cold, and myth or no myth, the whole noses and warm breath thing sounded really really attractive.

Chief was still leaning across the console, waiting to see what I was going to do.

I wish I could say I leaned in and pushed my lips up against his, and that his went all soft and yielding right before his arms came across the divider line between us and went around my shoulders to establish dominance before we settled in and tasted each other's tongues. Because that would be the ideal scenario, to just give in and kiss the boy, to listen to his breathing quicken as he shifted to get more comfortable and pulled me across the console to his side of the car. It would be ideal and it would be all kinds of good, because it had been a couple of nights since I'd gotten laid and it had been forever since I'd gotten laid by the person I actually wanted.

I wish I could say all that.

But I couldn't - because my mouth was too busy doing all those things, and when Chief pulled me across and I found myself laying half in his lap with my ass on the radio and my legs in the driver's seat, all coherent thought went _whoosh_ just as quickly as his lung capacity had during that first flat spin.

"Morley - "

"Yes Sir?"

He hesitated, and I wondered if I'd finally pushed him too far.

"Can you...your shoulder - "

I turned a little, catching the warmth of his breath on my neck as I resettled, but god that radio under my butt was uncomfortable and when I shifted again he grunted and grabbed me by my hips, dragging me the rest of the way to his side and shoving one arm under my knees to heft me completely into his lap. "Come here - just, be still."

Something about the authoritative growl in his voice sent me off the edge. Our mouths came together hard and then it was on, hands grabbing and bodies pushing and teeth nipping until I felt his fingers slide up my ribs, under my multiple shirts. I didn't wait for him to tell me what he wanted, I just sat up and peeled out of my coat, shoving it down into the floor between his knees and shivering when I heard him groan as I struggled to get out of Andy's heavy flannel. His hands came up to help and I let him.

He laughed when the first shirt opened to reveal a second.

"It's twelve degrees here, shut up."

More buttons, and finally he had me peeled enough to push his hands up under my tee shirt. He didn't even hesitate before sliding them up over my bra, his warm fingers coming to rest on top of my breasts where the cups didn't cover.

 _Geezus_ it felt good. Andy was always particularly attentive to my chest, but his hands were all long fingers and soft skin and bony knuckles - Chief's hands were thick and strong and his palms and fingertips were rough with age and hard work and hockey stick handling, and as he squeezed my breasts I swear I felt something break loose inside me. A heavy groan rumbled out of my throat and immediately his mouth was there, sucking and biting where the sound had come from, and when I ground myself down on his lap his hands moved down and then pushed up under the cups of my bra.

I may have yelped, though I couldn't really be sure if it was because of the sudden chill of exposure or the rough rub of callused fingers on my nipples, and he didn't give me time to decide between the two - before my brain could resituate itself inside my skull he had lowered his head and replaced his fingers with his mouth, and the top of my head nearly hit the dash when he gave my nipple a hard suck.

"Ohh...fuck...Chief - "

My hand went to his lap without me putting much thought into it and a ragged groan ripped out of his chest when my knuckles bumped against the swelling inside his jeans. It was big and solid and radiated a surprising amount of heat, and just as the stuttering realization that _Holy shit Chief's got an erection_ settled into my head, a hard knock on the driver's side window yanked us both unceremoniously back to the real world.

A real world where a blizzard was covering the car with a foot of snow at a disconcertingly quick rate, where I was strewn across the front seat with all fourteen of my shirts unbuttoned and my brain completely empty and the windows completely fogged with the frantic heat of our breath and Chief's goddamn boner.

A real world where a Turnbull Highway Patrol Officer was rapping on the window with the butt of a flashlight, trying to see into the car through the fog while I groaned in unfulfilled misery and tried to put myself together and scramble back into the driver's seat before I rolled the window down and smiled innocently at him.

"Everybody okay in there? Oh hey Chief Davis, I thought this was one of your cruisers."

"Hey Addison."

I looked over at Chief. He had his elbow up on the window on his side, his face resting in his hand. Officer Addison looked at me for a long time, obviously trying to puzzle out who I was and why I was driving Unit Two. "It's about to dump another foot on us, you should get your business done and head back to town before noon. Gonna get real nasty out here."

"Yeah, thanks Addison. We're headed into the city on a quick turnaround."

I smiled at Addison. "We're going to Big Fucks."

I heard Chief choke a little and Addison just stared at me. _"Grand Forks,_ we're headed to - yeah," Chief stammered, trying to get the officer's attention back on himself and off of me. "Car stalled."

"Oh, you need a jump?"

I took the keys from Chief's outstretched hand and gave the ignition a turn; the engine roared into noisy life like nothing had ever been wrong with it.

"We're good, thanks."

"Okay then, see ya Chief."

Chief gave Officer Addison a halfhearted wave, and as we watched him go back to his vehicle I found I had to put a real concerted effort into looking anywhere except at the dimming tail lights in front of us. Then I felt something touch my shoulder and turned to find Chief holding my coat out to me.

"We better get to the airport before the roads close."

"Yeah, we better. They'll be locking the doors to Big Fucks if we don't get there pretty soon."

He stared at me for a second, probably trying to sort in his head whether I was being cryptically crude or was just an idiot. I had another lame joke about needing a jump but it was lost to the rude interruption of a King Transport truck blasting its horn at us as it passed.

Neither of us looked at the other while we put ourselves back together. It felt like two people getting dressed after a drunken hookup, suddenly sober and not sure which one should be the first to acknowledge what just happened. But one thing I knew for sure as I eased the big cruiser back out onto the road - Chief was right about me being just one more unexpected mishap away from a screaming meltdown.

But so was he, and now it was just a race to see which of us lost it first.

_To be continued..._


	31. Off The Record

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an in-between bonus scene that takes place a few chapters back, probably the day Chief told Greta to stay home. I haven't decided yet exactly when this occurs but it would likely be around that timeframe. We get both Chief's and Andy's viewpoints here for a little bit of detailing that had to be left out of the main story for the sake of not spoiling the recent reveals.

"Hey buddy."

Andy looked up, the quick smile he was known for already lighting up his face. Chief stopped where he stood, in the doorway, blocking the way both in and out like he always did. Pure impulse, a learned habit. Anyone wanting to get past him to the boy in the break room would have to muscle their way in or shoot him, and Tommy Davis wasn't an easy obstacle to bypass. Forty years of roughhouse ice hockey had made him a solid speedbump to be reckoned with and seven years of guarding Andy Burns had steeled his resolve into an iron will. If anything ever happened to Andy, it would only be because he was dead. "How's everything goin'?"

"Good Chief."

The kid stood up and Chief was a little freaked out, as always, at the sheer size of him. Six six his ass - with shoes he easily hit six eight no matter what his official records claimed. It was always a bit overwhelming being near him, but Andy was a sweet kid with a gentle nature and a soft touch, probably to counteract the fact that he could likely wipe the floor with just about anyone he chose to if he ever lost his shit. Which, coincidentally, he had done once. Just once, but once was enough to land him here, in protective custody, possibly for the rest of his life.

And now since Cree had been spending all his free time teaching him to fight and bullying him endlessly into defending himself, his physicality was finally starting to catch up to the berserker part of his brain that had been capable of cold blooded murder. He was still thin and wiry, but there was a solidness to his shoulders now, a more assured steadiness to the way he moved. He was an imposing presence based on size alone, but that shy smile that melted quickly into an impish grin, and those soft intelligent eyes - there wasn't an aggressive bone in his freakishly tall body and Chief had never bothered wondering why the women loved him so much. If they didn't want to bed him they wanted to cook for him or do his laundry or make sure he had warm socks. There was no shortage of mothers where he was concerned.

Not even Greta was immune to his particular brand of loopy charm, and that was saying something.

"Listen, about Officer Morley - "

The smile left Andy's face as quickly as it had appeared. "She's okay, Chief."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"No really - she's fine. You don't need to worry about her."

"I can call in Ted."

Andy's head jerked up; Chief wasn't fucking around, not if he was willing to even _say_ Ted's name in this context.

"God no! Not Ted, no. Come on Chief, she's okay."

"I mean it Andy, if I start to think for one second she's here to flush you out I'll have her on the next flight to Quantico in a sack. If she does or says _anything_ \- "

"No Boss, come on." The raw pleading in his voice was heartbreaking and Chief felt his chest clutch up. He hadn't seen Andy this panicked since the week he'd arrived with nothing but that baby blanket in a ratty backpack and a pair of dirty Converse on his feet. Those soft green eyes were wide with fear, just like they had been then.

"Alright. But I mean it, Andy. One bad vibe off her and I step in. We clear?"

"Clear, yeah."

The pair of them went silent. There were a lot of unspoken words hanging between them, words Andy didn't want to hear and Chief didn't want to say, and the sudden quiet wasn't doing much to make either of them feel better about their presence. Greta's arrival had been highly suspect and Andy knew Chief had been watching her from the moment she'd crossed the county line and became his problem. Sending him into the bar to see how she reacted to him had been a ballsy move right out of the gate, but Chief had no patience where his protection was concerned. Greta could have made a call the moment she saw him and had a red laser dot on his forehead before he sat down.

She didn't know there was one on her before she even got in the door.

Chief was kinda scary that way.

Andy sometimes wondered which one of them was assigned to him on any given day, but the truth of it was that they were good at what they did and he was happier not knowing the details. Sometimes it was obvious - Creeley would be glued to him sunup to sundown on Monday, Saint would be his best friend on Tuesday, Wednesday he'd be working with Kevin - who had it been the night Greta wandered into the bar to drown her fury in a bottle of Glen? Oh right, Cade had been there, sitting at the other end of the bar with a bottle of beer that he never actually finished. If she'd been anyone of consequence, he would have been safe no matter what her orders ended up being.

Taking Greta home hadn't been part of the plan, but he'd _known._ The woman slugging back whiskeys like they were cream sodas wasn't there to rat him out, she wasn't there to kill him, and if she intended to report to a superior about his whereabouts, she certainly wasn't in any hurry to do it.

She just seemed lost.

He knew what that felt like.

Chief had been plenty irritated at him for taking that kind of risk. And now, a week later, he still wasn't convinced she was harmless. They'd been quickfooting a reckless sort of tapdance around each other, denying what was obvious, Chief determined to do his job and Greta determined to get the hell out of Dodge and both of them determined to bug the piss out of each other above and beyond everything else. It was frustrating watching them, knowing what he knew.

They were both lonely. Chief's dead wife and Greta's ex husband and - he suspected - her ill fated relationship with her Captain back home, all of it was making them get their backs up even while the pheromones were flowing between them. He'd read her files, he could piece together what sort of a person she was. And she hadn't had an easy time of it since the incident. She and Chief were perfect for each other.

But Chief couldn't get around two things: the name Anna Creeley Davis carved on a tombstone up on Ishpadinaa Ridge, and the fact that Andy had slept with Greta that night...and the next...and probably the next as well, but who the hell was keeping count? He suspected that last reason was the final catalyst that made him so willing to hang onto his suspicions about her with such a fierce stubbornness. Chief was a hell of a good man, but it was becoming obvious he had a jealousy issue where Greta was concerned. Andy's sore jaw reminded him of that simple fact every time he tried to eat.

And the same brutal jealousy that made him willing to throw a fist at someone he considered family fueled an equally brutal determination to keep Andy alive. He knew Chief would do whatever it took.

The thought of him activating Ted though...it put a shiver up his spine.

"Is that why you won't make a move on her?"

Something flinched in Chief's face, a subtle twitch in his left cheek, a quick squint of his eye that always reminded Andy of the unnamed cowboy Clint Eastwood played when he was young. The Chief sort of reminded him of him.

"What?"

"I know you like her. She likes you too. You're both kinda stupid though."

"Excuse me?"

"I just think you should stop playing games with her and go direct." He made a gesture with one hand that wasn't really indicative of anything, but Chief knew what he meant. And he was right. Still didn't give the kid the right to tell him how to handle his business.

"I'm not having this discussion with you. You're my responsibility, I'm not yours."

Andy grinned. "I'm just sayin'."

"Well don't say. Keep your say to yourself. Just - " He waved a hand toward the file on the table that Andy had been reading when he came in. " - just go back to whatever you were doing."

"Okay boss."

Chief turned to leave, stopping just long enough to take a last glance back at the kid in the break room. Something still felt off about the whole situation, something he couldn't even begin to put a finger to. But for now he had no real option but to stand down, because Andy was right - Greta hadn't done anything suspect aside from arriving, and nobody had seen or heard anything from her that made them nervous. She seemed to be here for exactly the reason written on her transfer papers. Disciplinary reassignment, an active duty timeout while a group of suits in LA decided whether she'd get to keep her badge or be put out to permanent pasture on early retirement.

Either way, she hadn't hurt Andy. If she was legit, he was just that much safer with her glued to him. Targets were harder to hit when something was standing in front of them blocking the line of sight. If she wasn't legit...well, there were plenty of eyes on her. Eyes and laser sights.

He wouldn't be calling his contact with the Feds today.

He wasn't so sure about tomorrow though.

"Chief, did you see this part about her partner?"

"Hm?"

Andy's face was scrunched up in confusion, his lips moving silently as he read to himself. "It says here that he was pronounced at the scene. But over here - " He rifled through the papers, stopping on the summation page, and Chief felt his stomach lurch. "It says here that he was still alive on the scene and died later at the hospital."

Chief shook his head, trying to keep his face neutral. Andy was smart, but there was no way he could piece together that discrepancy without the part that wasn't in the report. The part his contact with the Feds had filled in during his briefing before Greta had arrived. The part about how Officer Joe Martino survived the crash because Greta had purposefully spun the vehicle so that the initial impact was fully on her side, protecting her partner and taking a nearly life-threatening injury herself to make sure he had a better chance of getting out alive. He knew the accident re-creation report had left that part out, replacing it with a falsified account of how the first deadly impact hit directly on Officer Martino's side of the vehicle, killing him instantly.

He knew that was the version Greta was presented with when she woke up three days later with a life changing spinal injury. It was the official version, and she was going to have to live the rest of her life believing she hadn't been able to save her partner. That she'd killed him.

He also knew the rest of the truth, the truth Greta would never be told and that someone had taken out of the report. That while she lay upside down and unconscious in the burning vehicle, someone walked up to the passenger side and put a bullet in Officer Martino's head while he struggled to release the safety catch on Greta's harness.

None of that was in the file in front of Andy, but there was a glaring hole where it should have been, and Chief had caught it even with his short attention span. It was just a matter of time before Andy caught it too and started asking questions. He'd given him the file for a reason.

Looked like the kid was going to come through for him, sooner rather than later.

"Don't worry about it, buddy. Things get mixed up between initial investigations and final rulings, shit's always confused at the scene. Somebody just messed up somewhere."

Andy obviously wasn't convinced, but he nodded anyway. "Yeah, okay Chief. You headin' out?"

"Yup."

"You got a date?"

Chief narrowed his eyes, shooting Andy a warning look that the boy knew meant absolutely nothing. "Mind your own business before I call the Feds on you."

Andy laughed, and for the thousandth time Chief wondered how the hell he could be such a happy person with all that had happened to him. Some people just had all the luck with contentment and pleasant nature. He wasn't one of them, himself. His own personality had mellowed a bit since his head injury, but whatever he'd lost had been replaced with a quick temper and a short memory. It sucked, but at least nobody had walked up and put a bullet in his head.

There had been times he wished they had, though.

And now this thing with Greta...he had no idea how to handle any of it, and it was making him surly and shorter tempered than usual. Andy was right, he did like her - more than he cared to admit - but he couldn't shake the nagging suspicion that even if she wasn't there on a mission, she was being used by someone with an agenda that involved Andrew Burns.

And for that he could never let his guard down around her, not until she'd served her time and was gone back to LA and out of his hair. None of them would ever see her again and their lives could go back to normal, just waiting out Andy's old bosses and the Federal Prosecutor's Office, watching over him and the town like they'd been doing for longer than any of them could be bothered to care about. Just living, and keeping Andy alive. An odd little pang of regret stung his gut at the thought of a morning that didn't start out with Greta Morley bitching at him for the way he ran his operation.

He turned to leave before Andy could catch the frown he knew was putting a deep crease between his eyes.

"Wait a sec, hold up."

Andy had gotten up from the table to retrieve his backpack from a hook on the wall and was digging through it, pulling out something wrapped carefully in the morning's newspaper and holding it out to him. "For Anna. I know you're goin' to see her. Or for you if you don't." He pushed the newspaper into Chief's hand and went back to the table, folding his long legs up under it to resume reading Greta's file. God only knew what he was going to figure out if he kept poring over those reports.

Couldn't hurt, and it kept him busy. Maybe he would find whatever it was that kept Chief up at night, worrying about the woman who had blasted into their quiet little lives with her big city bullshit and nice ass and beautiful dark eyes...

Goddammit.

"G'nite kid."

He sat in his Jeep for a while, letting the engine warm the cylinders and the heater warm his bones, though if he was being honest with himself he was feeling a little bit guilty and a whole lot angry. Guilty that he wasn't really in the mood to go up on the Ridge to visit Anna's grave, and angry that Greta was likely the reason for it. Was it really time to move on? Kevin and his weekend psychology course seemed to think so. So did Wilson, in all his hairbrained coked up wisdom. Geezus, the people he trusted with his mental health. He reached across the seat and picked up the newspapered parcel Andy had given him, unwrapping the crumpled paper; inside it was a bundle of his homegrown cannabis. It was in full flower, speckled with little purple buds.

_For Anna, I know you're goin' to see her. Or for you if you don't._

There were a lot of things in life that Tommy Davis wasn't one hundred percent sure about, but the fact that Andy Burns was a good kid wasn't one of them. In fact that was maybe the one thing he was _absolutely_ sure of, and he felt a smile replacing the fearsome frown that had been trying to trigger a headache in his skull all day. He realized then that he had driven to the end of the block and was sitting at the stop sign at Otaanabe Street, but he hadn't clicked on his blinker yet to indicate which way he was going.

Right would take him out to Ishpadinaa Ridge.

Left would take him home. Home, which was coincidentally just five houses away from Greta's.

He didn't know how long he sat there, but in the end he just went straight. In all of his forty-six years women had never once been a problem for him...and he'd be damned if they were going to start now.

_To be continued..._


	32. Call Me Sir

**_Grand Forks Municipal Airport_ **

I didn't give Chief time to get out of the car before I was out and running, pausing just long enough to lean back in and tell him to stay put. I didn't want Ant seeing me walking in with a man beside me, especially _that_ man; it was the one thing I knew without any shadow of any doubt that he would latch onto with his teeth and never let go of until I begged. The very last thing I needed in my very long list of things I didn't need was my brother giving me endless shit about bedding my boss, which would be an automatic assumption I would never be able to talk him out of.

I was already guilty of that back in LA and he knew it and absolutely didn't approve of it. He also didn't care much for Hawk because of that particular sinful inclination of mine, and putting him and Chief off on the wrong foot was a misstep I intended to avoid at all costs. Besides, it was a sin I hadn't committed yet with this particular boss.

So far. Intentions didn't count.

Lap sitting and brief kisses didn't count either. Even the boob thing wasn't enough to condemn either of us.

Geezus, my nipples tingled at the memory of his hands sliding up under my shirt, pushing my bra up and giving them a rub with those rough fingertips of his. I didn't know what the hell that man was thinking at the time but I had to give it to him, he had good finger style. I couldn't tell if it was the cold or the recall of his mouth on me, but everything was stiff and rubbing uncomfortably against the inside of my teeshirt as I entered the terminal lobby and prayed for one small break from the universal overlords. Just one. _Just stay in the car._

"Hey hermanita!"

My cheeks still felt hot from the sensory replay and Ant tilted his head in question as I ran toward him, leaning back with his arms wide when I jumped on him like a cat climbing a tree. "You blushin'?"

"It's twelve degrees out there, I'm frostbit." He put me down and gave me the squinted eye of suspicion, but I was mostly immune to it after thirty years of Anthony Morley's patented disapproval and just let it slide right off me. "How was your flight?"

"Long. Stupid. Jackhole coughin’ on me in the next seat, you know how it is."

"Yeah well. I hate to tell ya but it's not going to get any better the closer we get to town. Come on." He leaned over to pick up his bag, glancing around like he expected to see someone hovering nearby.

"Who sent me that text? It came from your number but that wasn't you."

I stopped dead and looked at him. Chief had finally gotten around to finishing the text during the long silent remainder of the drive after Turnbull HP threw their epic sex repellent all over us. "How could you tell?"

 _"Anthony, do not take the cab. We will be there to pick you up._ You don't type like that, and it was _we,_ plural."

"Oh. Yeah, my boss is in the car."

He gave me another out of his impressive stock of meaningful looks, leaning back and narrowing his eyes to level the same accusatory glare on me that he'd been giving me since the first time I ever did anything stupid.

"What? He just wanted to check my driving, make sure I could handle the ice. I’ve only been here a week, there’s just one criminal in the entire town and he does all his illegal shit on foot. My skills are a total waste here.” I grabbed his bag from his hand and started for the door again; the automatic sensor kept sliding it open and shut every time I moved and the big redfaced guy behind the snack bar was shooting me a rapidly escalating nasty scowl each time it blew his napkins off the counter. “Come on, they don't care much for outsiders in these parts and we kinda stand out."

"Not Scandinavian enough?"

"Hey the mayor's a goddamn viking, I'm not even remotely joking."

He didn't look like he believed me. I barely believed me. The truth was stranger than anything I could have made up though, and after a week and a half in I was finding myself being shocked less and less with each day's new quota of weirdness. "You're gonna _love_ Red Hanrahan. And Bobby Creeley. And Kevin. And Wilson, oh my god."

"Sounds like you've been makin' friends, Gret. I thought you were dyin' out here?"

His words took me aback for a second and I had to think about it. I wasn't sure if I considered Red Hanrahan a friendly associate, but the rest of them...they _were_ sort of growing on me.

Huh. Wasn't that an odd thing.

Chief was standing beside the car, leaning against the fender with his coat collar turned up and his face tucked into it like some damn sexy film noir detective watching us as we crossed the dropoff lane toward him. I tried not to look at him, I really did - but he just looked so ridiculously goddamn fuckable, and I couldn't stop thinking about that solid bump in his lap when he'd pulled me across the console and settled me onto his thighs. My own thighs still felt quivery and a little weak from it. He took one hand out of his pocket and used his teeth to pull his glove off, offering a handshake to Ant like an actual civilized gentleman, though all I could think of was that hand squeezing my boob just about a half hour ago.

Geezus. The shudder that shimmied through me just made my nipples go all Hello Soldier again and Chief glanced past my brother at me like he knew what my problem was.

"You the boss huh?" Ant asked, taking his outstretched hand and giving it a hard shake.

_Don’t think about where that hand’s been, stop it right now._

"That'd be me."

"Chief Tommy Davis - Anthony Morley." I caught myself pointing at each of them as I said their names and realized this stupid place was rubbing off on me. "Do your male bonding bullshit in the car please, I'm freezing."

Chief shot me another cockeyed look and Ant just gave me that _whoo hoo ain't she a sassy thang_ face that I knew far too well to be bothered by. But the truth of it was that I was freezing, and damp drawers don't mix with sub zero temps.

The return trip from Gigantic Farts was mostly uneventful, aside from the reassuring but massively appalling fact that Chief and my brother got along really well. Like _nauseatingly_ well, and something that felt disconcertingly like jealousy rumbled up in my gut every time their conversation excluded me for more than a few seconds. Chief obligingly loaded himself into the back seat with Ant's carry-on, and every time I glanced in the rearview mirror he would either bring his eyes to mine slowly or already be looking at me; I probably don’t have to outline what kind of perverse effect that had on me, but I will say that my voice kept cracking and breaking every time I tried to add to the conversation to the point where Ant ended up asking me if I was taking a rewind on puberty. It was then that I remembered my brother had a mouth on him to rival anything Bobby Creeley ever let rip.

I was going to have to be real careful about who I let him spend time with.

The chatter between him and Chief finally died down for a few minutes somewhere around Mile Marker 82, until Ant, staring out the window at snow, snow, and more snow, commented to no one in particular, "That's a lotta snow."

I don't even know what set me off, but I remember staring straight ahead at the ice coated road and starting to laugh. It wasn't even a slow build-up to hysteria - I just opened my mouth and it burst out, and once it got going I couldn't have stopped it if I'd tried.

Maybe it was the pent-up frustration of having sat on Chief's lap and rubbed against his erection just enough to spark my fire and then having it interrupted by that goddamn cop Addison from fucking Turnbull Highway Patrol. In all likelihood that was _exactly_ what it was, coupled with the weirdness of sitting next to my brother while the owner of the erection sat in the back seat watching me in the mirror and conversing about the weather, the lack of traffic, and the general Twilight-Zonish quality of the countryside as we drove through it.

It was a nerve jangling situation all around, and my nerves were definitely jangling. The fact that I was driving the two of them back to Weepeepeewhatever where my brother would eventually be meeting my other co-workers was pure icing on this double layer cake of bizarre circumstances. Unfortunately someone forgot to add sugar and substituted salt in this particular bowl of frosting...and everyone was about to get a huge gagging mouthful of disaster served up with a nice big squirt of humiliation on top.

I could feel it coming.

We dropped Ant off at my place on our way back to the station - Chief tried to give me the rest of the day off, but Ant stood there at the end of my driveway looking from the bright magenta shutters on the windows to the rusty wrought iron fencing between my yard and the yard next door, just sort of shaking his head in disbelief that this was actually my life now. “You go on back to work, I got shit to do,” he said with all the conviction of a man with a Home Depot Preferred Customer card and a free weekend. “Gimme the keys to whatever you’re drivin’ and get gone.”

Chief had moved to the front seat of the cruiser and was stifling what I knew had to be a huge shit eating grin as I sheepishly pointed to the rattletrap truck I’d been loaned by the city, parked forlornly at the curb and looking like its fenders would fall off if anything stronger than a stiff breeze moseyed past it. I tossed Ant the keys and ignored the look of pure mortification on his face. Cars were my thing, I liked them sleek and fast - and that ramshackle old Mater lookalike was probably the last set of wheels in the world that I would have chosen if it had been my choice to make.

But it hadn’t been, and as I got back in the cruiser and shot Chief a _don’t say a word or you’re a dead man_ look while Ant waved us off, I had a pretty good idea whose choice it _had_ been.

I had barely made it to my desk before the shit started hitting every proverbial fan within a twelve mile radius of the station. My coat wasn’t even off yet when Cree launched one of Sarah’s pencils at me and started flapping those antagonistic lips of his with the full intention of ruining what was left of my day.

"Ya know, those radios are - "

"Yeah, two-way, I know."

Another pencil bounced off my shoulder.

"The car sets too."

Andy groaned so loud from inside the holding cell that everyone looked at him. "Geezus Greta I _told_ you!"

It took me a second to figure out what the point of this conversation was, and as a third pencil ricocheted off my desk and missed my left eye by just about a quarter inch, it hit me.

The point, not the pencil. I spun around to face Andy. "You said the hand units!"

 _"All_ the radios!"

I think I stood there for a full fifteen seconds just staring at him, letting it sink in real good and proper that the entire department had likely been passing around a twenty on whether or not Chief was going to get me into the back seat on the way to Colossal Fuckholes or whatever that damn town was called. "Great, thanks guys. Goddamn bunch of - were you _all_ listening?"

Cade looked over at Saint, who turned around to look at Kevin on the other side of the glass partition to the hall. They all looked confused.

"Listening to what?"

"Cree said - "

"I didn't say nothin', Officer Morley of the El Ay Pee Dee.” Creeley lobbed a pencil at the ceiling, giggling like a large hairy six year old when it stuck lead-first into the porous tile and then looking directly at me kinda like Scar looked at Simba’s dad just as he was about to let him fall off the cliff. “But you sure as hell did just now."

Cade bent over and pulled his jacket up over his head, a high pitched peal of crazed laughter not even remotely muffled by his halfassed attempt to hide it. Andy sat down on the cot inside the cell with a sick look of sympathy on his face. And just as things were starting to get real damn uncomfortable, Chief leaned out of his office and whistled loud enough to make me jump so hard my neck kinked up. "Officer Morley, come in here please."

I pointed a finger at Creeley on my way past and he threw his hands up in a _wasn’t me_ gesture. Damn room full of reprobates. I didn’t know what the hell they'd done for entertainment before my arrival, but it was starting to feel like I should be charging a fee.

"I turned it off."

I shut the door behind me and watched Chief sit down on the outer edge of his desk. He was limping again and I’d be buggered if that didn’t make me feel fizzy in weird places.

"Excuse me Sir?"

"The radio. It was off.” He motioned toward the outer room beyond the door behind me, where I could hear at least three pairs of feet scrambling for prime eavesdropping spots. “They didn't hear anything, Creeley's yanking your chain."

"Goddammit. I hate this place so fucking much."

“Shhh.” Chief held a finger to his lips for a second, then moved past me quickly and yanked the door open. The entire station - with the exception of Andy who was still locked in the cell and Sarah who could have cared less - stood to attention in a crowded cluster on the other side. They were so busted they didn’t even scramble and Chief started right in pointing fingers and issuing orders. “Cree, you and Cade go down to the square and break up that snowball fight, it’s Hansen and Billings again and you know that never ends well. Kevin, I need you to call Red and have him bring over his accounting, tell him I’ll look at it tonight. Saint - you’re on patrol, get to the east side, Dalton Pike called in a wolf sighting at the mill. And Pearl - “ He paused until she looked up from her Sudoku - “See if you can find the key and get Andy out of that damn cell, would you?”

I had to give it to the man, he had the voice and demeanor of absolute authority and a no-nonsense repertoire of facial expressions to back it up. And as the crowd dispersed to follow his orders without question or complaint, he closed the door and turned back to me with an enigmatic little smile on that devious mouth of his. A devious mouth that just about an hour and a half ago had been attached to my bare breast, sucking like he was starving and boob was what’s for dinner.

I may have shivered a little at the memory. He saw it and that quizzical eyebrow of his shot up as he stepped toward me, reaching out with both hands to take mine and tug me gently toward him.

“Having a hard time warming up?”

“It’s only five degrees warmer in here than it is outside, Sir. I’m not used to this.”

“You’ll acclimate.” He tugged my hands again, bringing me just a little bit closer. “You’re a bad idea, Morley.”

“The worst.”

He nodded, staring down at my lips. “You might be the most ill-advised decision I’ve ever made.”

“Oh? And what decision would that be, Sir?”

There it was, the scowl that always followed _Sir_. He was still looking at my mouth and I tilted my head back to encourage him, because he was stalling and my libido wasn’t having it.

“This one.”

In the space of the next breath he pulled me toward him enough to put his chest against mine and sure enough, there was still a good solid representation of his masculinity tucked away down there below where our bellies were pressed together. Only now it was bumping against my thigh and reminding me of our interrupted kiss in the car, of the one in the deck chair the night of the bonfire hockey game in his back yard, of…well I couldn’t remember whatever else had gone down between us only to be interrupted by some idiot with a deathwish, because just about the time I was trying to recall how many times our lips had actually touched, they were suddenly doing it again with a vengeance. His hands came up to the middle of my back and his arms locked around me, and then I felt his breath on my face and we were off to the races for the third - or was it the fourth? - time. And as he nudged my mouth open with his tongue and slipped it inside, all the pent up sexual tension between us flared into something dangerously incendiary, far more quickly and with far more explosiveness than I think either of us intended.

“Fuck it Morley, I don't even care anymore," he growled against my mouth. _"Call me Sir.”_

He was much rougher than I expected him to be. Not that it wasn't a welcome thing - the sex play with Andy was always fun, a little bit crazy and a lot debauched, but when Chief picked me up by my ass and slammed me down on the edge of his desk and pushed me onto my back all within the space of a single heartbeat, I swear I felt something snap inside me.

And it wasn't my spine this time.

_“Geezus, Tommy - “_

I heard the words come out of my mouth without thinking about what I was saying. I knew Chief wanted more than just about anything for me to use his name…but I never could have guessed what kind of an affect finally hearing me do it would have on him.

It was kind of startling, if I’m being honest. His breathing immediately turned raspy and hoarse against my shoulder, and when he gripped me behind the knees and yanked me down to him I was already halfway there, wet in the britches and ready to shed my clothes right there on top of his desk with Andy locked in the holding cell out in the main lobby. He stood between my thighs and pushed up against me, his big hands holding me just above my knees with a grip so determined to keep me still that it actually sort of hurt. It was a sharply erotic sort of discomfort and I groaned out loud.

The sound triggered something in him. Just as I was pulling up to grab his shoulders he pushed down onto me with his chest, forcing me onto my back again as he leaned over me, pinning me to the desk and moving one hand down between us. I could tell by the way his eyes were closed tight that he was pretty close to gone.

I was just about all the way around the bend myself. An overwhelming animalistic need to rub hard against him was blanking my brain completely out, and I squirmed my legs around until I got one in between his thighs and scooted my ass closer to the edge of the desk. He seemed to know what I was doing and hitched his knee up so I could grind against it.

Not gonna lie, the moment his knee touched my crotch I almost came, right there on my back on his desk, fully clothed and barely even foreplayed. I heard my voice wrapping itself around a strangled sort of high pitched half-scream just about the time Chief's hands were sliding under me to clutch my ass and grind me harder onto his knee.

 _"Fuck...geezus christ Greta..."_ He was panting hard with his face buried in the center of my chest, his heated breath making a wet spot on my shirt that I could feel against my skin underneath it. _"We can't do this here."_

Five words have never sounded more like a death sentence or carried a heavier burden of disappointment. But he was right and I knew it, no matter how much fun my nether regions were currently having with his kneecap. I realized my eyes were closed and I pried them open just in time to see a quick flash of that fiery blue before he looked down and started to raise himself up off of me.

He definitely had more presence of mind than me. But goddammit, why the _hell_ did he have to act on it?? His hands moved slowly up from holding my hips to resting on my ribcage, and when he moved his mouth away from my collar bone I realized he’d been biting me.

"Get out of here Morley, go spend time with your brother" he growled, his voice not much more than a croak from the overheated desire he was suddenly shoving into the closet to cool down. "Clock out and go home."

I knew he was right - there’s a time and a place for everything, and his desktop in his office in the station with a crew of bored troublemakers shuffling around nearby was neither of them - but damn if it didn’t physically _hurt_ to slam on the brakes like that. Of course it could have simply been my back injury protesting the random assortment of desk paraphernalia crushed under it more so than my hormones bemoaning the screeching halt. I sat up with a groan and straightened my shirt as he stepped back and looked down at his feet like a nervous schoolboy averting his eyes during a kissing scene on TV.

“Chief?”

He raised his eyes but kept his head down. “A minute ago it was Tommy.”

“A minute ago you were rubbing your dick on me, you’re lucky I didn’t start screaming twelve variations of _daddy_ in Puerto Rican.”

“Geezus Christ Morley.”

"A minute ago it was Greta."

He laughed, but he couldn't bring himself to look at me. And as I sat there on his desk wondering if I could get Cade to give me the dime so I could finish myself off in the taxidermist's bathroom, I wanted to giggle so bad I could barely hold it. The big strong man standing a foot away from me was doing the best impression of a guilty child caught doing something exhilaratingly naughty that I’d ever seen in my life - his chest was sort of heaving and his cheeks were flushed and he wouldn’t make eye contact with me, and as I rebuttoned the top button of Andy’s worn out flannel shirt to cover the bite mark that was no doubt now gracing my collarbone, I put one foot out to tap him on the knee and get his attention.

He hadn't said _we can't do this._ He'd said we can't do this _here._ That at least carried a hint of promise.

“Are we ever going to get our shit together Sir?”

He sighed, raking a big hand through his hair and then scrubbing his palm down his face in a gesture of frustration that I felt right down to my very damp knickers.

“It’s a lot of shit, Morley.”

“Yeah, and?”

“I’m your boss.”

“Technically, yes. But not really. You’re more of a…babysitter, to be honest.”

The mortified way his eyes squinted up nearly made me laugh out loud. “Okay bad choice of words, we’re not in a Nabokov novel here. What I meant was - “ I hooked my foot around the back of his knee and gave him a little nudge to step toward me, reaching out to hitch my fingers inside the button placket of his shirt and pull him the rest of the way. “You just happen to be the authority figure in charge of the naughty corner I got sent to, but you’re not the one who put me there.”

He finally raised his head and I could see the struggle going on inside it like it was written across his forehead. He didn’t like office affairs, I could tell that much by the way he kept leadfooting the brakes every time he got near me. I knew he didn’t like how close Andy and I were and it seriously knotted his boxers that I slept with the guy - repeatedly. I knew he didn’t like to share and that it was going to take a lot to convince him I wasn’t boinking the office gopher anymore and it was safe to slide in there himself. But there was something else to that dark look in his eyes as well, and it was something that went way deeper than simple workplace ethics and jealousy. Chief was harboring something heavy and painful, and I felt pretty sure that her picture was tucked behind the badge in his wallet.

Time to let him off the hook just a little bit. I'd sworn to torment the hell out of him, but there was something soft and unexpected simmering under my bullheaded resolve.

“It’s okay, Chief. I understand. I’m gonna be here for a year, right? We got time to sort out whose feet go where.”

He nodded and I tugged his head down to rest my forehead against his. He didn't resist, and the warm touch of his breath tickling over my nose helped settle that gnawing tension below my bellybutton. Truth was I was tired and sore and really did want to go home and spend some time with Ant. I’d have happily stayed for desk sex, but the crew had already figured out a workaround to replace listening at the door - from the corner of my eye I could see at least two of them through the window behind Chief’s desk, lobbing snow projectiles outside on the pretense of heading for the vehicles to carry out their assigned tasks. A huge splash of wet snow hit the window and Chief looked up past me.

The light coming in through the window hit his eyes just right and I swear they looked like a smoldering blue flame, just sort of burning with a cold heat that gave me chills straight through my clothes down into my bones.

The devil. He looked like the devil, all handsome and suave but burning from the inside with a perverse fire. I wanted nothing more out of life right that moment than to look up and see him staring at me like that while I was naked and panting under him, both of us finding a tiny spark of warmth from that buried inferno to burrow into in this ass-cold corner of hell.

I felt like he wanted it too...it was just going to take a little convincing to bring him around to the fact that dead wives and authority dynamics didn't have to equal brick walls. Hell might be eternal but even the devil can be negotiated with.

And somewhere in this town there had to be a bed we could both fit in comfortably.

His face was still close to mine and I leaned forward to nuzzle my nose against his cheek. His breathing was starting to slow down, but it was a shaky sort of control at best and he kept swallowing hard like the only thing in the world he wanted worse than a vicious hard fuck was a vicious stiff drink. I knew how he felt on that one. He was the only male in the department without a beard, but there was a bristly little day and a half growth of reddish blonde whiskers covering his cheeks and chin, and I wondered briefly how they would feel rubbing against the insides of my thighs.

I had plans to find out. Soon. But not while my brother was in town. That just had all kinds of nope all over it.

"I'll see you in the morning, Sir."

He laughed a little at the Sir, but I could tell he was still flustered and so frustrated he would have been sorely inclined to kill something if his hands weren't shaking too hard to hold a weapon. And just as I was sliding off the edge of his desk and moving past him to make as graceful an exit as I could manage under the circumstances, a familiar voice blasted through the main lobby and put an abrupt end to any delusion I had about making it through the day with my dignity somewhat intact.

"So which one of you's the guy flushing my sister's toilet at midnight?"

_To be continued..._


	33. A Euphemism's A Terrible Thing To Waste

"So which one of you's the guy flushing my sister's toilet at midnight?"

Oh god no...no no _noooo._ This was it, the end, Ant was going to call out what everyone already knew but that Chief was only just now starting to get past, and he was going to pitbull it to death until somebody begged for mercy. It would be me, I already knew this based on a childhood full of Anthony Dane Morley exposing literally every secret I ever tried to keep hushed just for the gleeful hell of embarrassing me and watching me scramble. And Chief was going to backslide again, right back into the screaming maw of jealousy that I'd only just now started pulling him out of.

This was going to suck so bad.

Andy raised his hand, sitting on the cot inside the holding cell. "Me, Sir."

I wanted to die a thousand deaths, and from the look on Chief's face, he wanted me to too. He had followed me out of his office and was leaning against the doorway, just staring at me with a dark mixture of leftover lust from our desktop encounter and the rising piss-vinegar irritation of jealousy over Andy being in close proximity with me in the middle of the night. I tried not to look at him but I could feel his eyes burning a hole in the back of my head as I went to get in between my brother and my erstwhile fuckbuddy. "Why are you here? I thought you had things to do?"

"I came to ask your boss if he knows you're still living out of boxes." He leaned around me to look at Chief. "You know she's still living out of boxes?"

Chief nodded with a sigh. "Yeah I know she's still living out of boxes."

Creeley grunted. "Why you still livin' outta boxes?"

"Because I didn't plan on being here this long."

Andy raised his hand again from the cot inside the holding cell. "Was the toilet question a euphemism?"

Oh god. I spun around and threw a warning finger at him. "Shut up Andy."

" - because if it's a euphemism - "

_"Shut up Andy!"_

"Hey now wait hold up, let the man talk." Ant moved me out of the way and stationed himself at the door to the cell, staring in at Andy with a half grin that I knew could only mean trouble. "What if it was, would the answer still be you?"

Andy nodded. "Afraid so Sir."

Chief made a noise from over at the door to his office that I could only describe as a snort of derision combined with a grunt of barely contained anger. It came out sounding like a pit bull huffing paprika up its nose. He stomped back into his office and slammed the door, causing Ant to look from me to Andy and over at Chief's office door twice each before he broke into a wide grin and turned back to Andy, crossing his arms slowly and purposefully across his chest. "Is that right. Are we sure about this? 'Cause that man over there don't seem to approve."

"Chief doesn't approve of anything. Come on, I'm clocking out."

Creeley completely ignored my announcement and stepped in front of me to hold a hand out to Ant. "Bobby Creeley. You and the Great One are siblings huh?"

"Ehh you too? I been callin' her that since we were kids. She hates it."

"Yeah I know." Cree turned around to smirk at me, then turned back to Ant. "Just for funsies, who'd you think it was flushin' her toilet?"

"Oh my god can we drop the toilet subject? Come on Ant - "

"Are we talking literally or euphemistically?"

"Oh my god."

"Both."

Ant ignored me while he did a quick visual scan around the room, and when his eyes stopped moving I wanted to resume that thousand deaths thing. "Him," he pronounced with absolute confidence. He was pointing at Cade. And Cade, like he always did, burst out laughing in that manic gleefully unhinged way that was so distinctly his own.

Just perfect.

"Cade's married, sorry Ant."

"No he's not."

I turned around to look at Cree; he was standing behind me with two fingers up in response to the slow bird that Cade was flying in his direction. But I couldn't even question the discrepancy in Cade's marital status because Ant was pointing at Andy again, and all I wanted in life was to get him the hell away from these people.

Especially Andy.

"What's he doin' in the tank?"

"Long story."

"Oh I gotta hear this." He went to the bars and stood there staring in at the prisoner. "Who put you in here?"

"The dog."

"The dog? What dog?"

"No no no, do not summon that demonfreak, I mean it. Nobody calls the dog."

Chief's door opened while I was trying desperately to maneuver a quick exit, and before he even spoke I knew he was going to do something awful. I felt it so deeply in my bones that I probably would have fainted cold if he _hadn't_ done it. But I was spared a second episode of head-meet-floor when he tossed a set of keys across the room and paused just long enough to end it all for me with nine little words.

"Andy, go help Greta and Ant unpack her boxes."

And there it was, the final pronouncement of how the next three days were going to go for me, courtesy of one jealous pissbaby superior officer. Sarah and I both turned to glare at him, though Sarah's glare was a bit less pointed than mine...and then I remembered he had only assigned her to look for those keys to give her something to do. Something that would keep her away from his office door while we put undue strain on the desk's legs on the other side of it. But the fact that he'd come _this close_ to giving me an orgasm with his knee didn't excuse him from the petty envy I could feel coming off him in great rolling waves in response to the room's acknowledgement of Andy's ridiculous good luck with women.

 _This_ woman in particular.

The keys had been in his pocket the whole time, I was pretty sure I remembered feeling them at some point when he was stretching out his upper half on top of me and my arms were sliding around his lower half, but it hadn't registered in my lust-flustered head what that particular bulge was - I was too busy concentrating on the larger, more important bulge elsewhere in that same pair of pants. And the look on Sarah's face told me she was well aware it had been a fool's errand from the moment Chief issued the order, so neither of us said a word when he shot us a warning look back and retreated into his office again.

I was so screwed. And not at all in the way I wanted to be.

I grabbed my coat and bag and walked out, leaving Ant to catch up to me with that insufferable grin on his face.

"Why'd you pick _that_ guy to keep you warm? Dude looks like Hozier."

I cranked the ignition on the bitchy old rattletrap the city had loaned me and flinched when it backfired twice before the engine settled into a resentful grumble. "That's your argument against him? He's Irish. Don't they all look like that?"

"Good one." He climbed in on the passenger side and took two hard pulls at getting the warped door to swing shut. Settling in on the uncomfortable bench seat, he looked around the dusty cab of the truck with a highly amused expression before making an attempt to extend the seatbelt. It was jammed, which was no huge surprise. "Do I have to bring up the undeniable fact that he's at least ten years younger than you?"

"So?"

"The Chief seems more suited to you - I mean, the drug dealer seems like a nice guy, but he's not really your type is he?"

I slammed my forehead into the steering wheel a couple of times to ground myself before facing him. "How do you know he's a drug dealer? I mean, he's not...okay maybe he is, but I think this state's about to legalize pot so technically he's just a little ahead of schedule."

"You kiddin' me?!" The grin trying to break wide across Ant's face was fighting hard and winning, and it was pissing me off in too many ways to count. "Besides, dude is sittin' in jail, Gret. We're out here waiting for him to get out of _jail."_

"That was the dog. It's some kind of a fucking prehistoric chupacabra or something, it's not really a dog - "

"I didn't see anybody in any hurry to let him out."

I groaned and gave up. The steering wheel felt like ice against my forehead, but it was a welcome chill to counteract the flushed heat that kept inching up my face toward my hairline every time Ant spoke. "That's - that's a long story."

"Yeah, seems like everything around here has a long story attached to it."

"Get used to that."

I could feel him staring at me, knew he was stifling a hard case of the guffaws at my cranky irritation. He held it for just about another seven seconds before he launched off onto another tangent guaranteed to make me lose my shit. "Now the _Chief_ \- "

"Oh _geezus_ Ant!" I grabbed the wheel with both hands and made what probably sounded like a tyrannosaur with menstrual cramps noise, then took a deep breath to calm myself and turned to look at my shithead brother. He was openly giggling, sitting there in my passenger seat just watching me fall apart and enjoying every frantic breath of it while he yanked fruitlessly at the jammed seatbelt. "Okay, I'll play your game. What about him?"

"The tension between you two is _astounding._ We're talkin' somebody's gonna blow and it's gonna be _ugly._ But I gotta applaud you for your restraint this time, at least you're not shaggin' the boss again." He paused just long enough to make a gesture encompassing everything around us. "I mean look where that got you."

My mouth was open to protest when Andy opened the creaky passenger door and flashed us both that broad loopy smile of his. "Hey guys. Chief says I'm goin' with you."

"So I heard."

Ant got out and motioned for him to get in. "I'm not ridin' bitch in this rusty old bucket, either you straddle the shifter or we arm wrestle for the back."

"I'm actually pretty good at arm wrestling - "

I reached out and snapped my fingers at him. "Andy, no honey. Not against Ant. Trust me. No."

They looked at each other and Ant shrugged like he didn't know what I was talking about, but fortunately Andy was an obedient angel and climbed into the cab of the truck and scooted across to the middle without complaint, folding up one insanely long leg to position it carefully in the floorboard on my side of the shifter and avoiding kicking me in the process. It was a tight squeeze and when he was finally situated his knees were tucked up uncomfortably under his chin, but at least he wasn't arm wrestling USMC five time undefeated wristbreaker Anthony Morley for the shotgun seat. There was something to be said for small blessings and tiny miracles.

I just hoped there was at least one more with my name on it, because it was going to be a long damn day.

The long damn day ended up not being quite as bad as I'd envisioned; Ant was his usual slyly devious and verbally destructive self, but Andy was that special kind of sweetly oblivious that eventually wore him down and by the time we had the living room cleared of boxes they were acting like buddies. Well, maybe buddies was an extreme term for the situation, but they were getting along and my fear of leaving them alone together was slowly smoothing itself down into something a little less sharp than the morbid paranoia I'd been entertaining.

We were nearing the halfway point on our first bottle of whiskey and Andy was telling a story about the time the frozen lake gave way in the middle of a particularly fierce hockey match when I decided now was as good a time as any to sneak off for a few minutes on the pretense of getting some air. Ant waved me off while filling Andy's glass again, and as I shut the door behind me I could hear them both laughing, Ant in his familiar deep honking sort of chortle and Andy with that rolling hee _hee HEE_ that got bigger and louder as it went on, like a wave building strength before it hits the shore and breaks apart. I was going to owe that boy big for the favor he was doing me - I didn't know if he'd figured it out for himself that I was going to need him to do the fake boyfriend bit until Ant went home, but whether he realized it or not, he was doing a beautiful job of _we're sort of together but it's new so we're going slow aside from the obvious hot crazed monkey sex we've been having since five minutes after she got off the plane._

It was stupid and ill advised on every conceivable level, but I was willing to do just about anything to keep my brother from sorting the fact that I was, once again, sliding into the sack with my superior officer.

Or was trying to, anyway.

Let him think I was solidly with the Irish drug dealer ten years my junior. It couldn't be any worse than what I was about to do...because I knew Chief wasn't going to make it till the weekend without decking Andy again if I didn't clue him in, and I seriously doubted Andy's jaw could take another whack like that last one.

The whiskey was sloshing around inside my head as I trudged up the street toward Chief's house, but I wasn't drunk - just tippled a little bit, probably enough to make what I was about to do seem like a relatively good idea in the overall scheme of things. The truth of it was that I didn't really know what I was doing other than a simple courtesy to my boss and a little protective maintenance for Andy's general well-being, and maybe a tiny bit of hopeful intervention for myself. Because aside from keeping him from killing my best friend in a fit of pique, I really wanted Chief to understand something.

And that something was the fact that I wanted him so bad it was starting to ache.

Or maybe that was the cold. Had I grabbed my coat on my way out? A quick check later I felt sure I was not only properly bundled but had my shoes on as well, and once I'd confirmed that the shutters on the house in front of me were the correct particularly hideous shade of teal, it was time to nut up or shut up.

I sucked in a deep breath and stomped up the steps to the porch.

A deeper breath later, I knocked.

It took him a few seconds to open the door, and when he did I saw him tucking something into the back pocket of his jeans, probably his phone based on how long it had taken him to appear. His eyes immediately went behind me and did a quick scan of the front yard, then he looked down at me with a look that all but grumbled _Yeah? Whaddya want?_

Not quite the same man that had pawed me on top of his desk just a few short hours ago. And he didn't seem inclined to invite me in. I cleared my throat and waited, but all that got me was a cute tilt of his head that reminded me of either Andy or Hobo, but I'd have been hard pressed to decide which it was more similar to. For all I knew they'd both learned it from him. "You gonna ask me in, Sir?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." He stepped back like the thought had never crossed his mind, but now that I brought it up he was embarrassed not to have thought of it himself. "Come on in."

"Thanks." I moved past him and in that awkward little moment when we were close enough to touch, I realized just how much I wanted him to do it again. And by _it_ I meant all of it - the aggressive grabbing, the dominant maneuvering, the slamming me down on a solid surface to grind against me, all of it. I wanted it bad, and here I was once again in his presence without anyone else around, and for some reason I knew it wasn't going to happen.

And that just about broke my icy little slightly tippled heart.

"Listen, I'm - I'm sorry about sending Andy over," he said with a halting hesitation. "I was feeling kinda arbitrary."

"Oh? And why's that?"

A heavy sigh, and then against all odds the Chief of Wecantdealwithourfeels finally came clean on what had been twisting his boxers for a week now. "Because I know he was telling the truth about being with you, and I know the next time it comes up he'll be telling the truth again, and probably the next time after that too."

My mouth was very likely hanging open for the entirety of the seven or so seconds that I stood there staring at him after he stopped talking. "What? What are you even - what's the _matter_ with you?" I took a step toward him and he started to step back, but stopped and stood his ground until I had no choice but to halt my advance or bump into him. "What did I tell you the other night?"

"I don't know."

"Think."

"I don't know Morley, geezus. A lot's happened since then."

"I said - " I reached out and laid a hand on his arm. " - lure me into your bed and keep me there."

He stared down at my hand for a long time, but didn't make any move to remove it. "I'm not sure I can do that."

"Why?"

"You and Andy - fucking _bonded_ or something."

Geezus this guy could be thick. Obviously Wilson's relationship seminars weren't taking hold. "Yeah well maybe you should blame yourself for that, you kept sending us out together. I don't handle loneliness very well. And he's a good guy, I'm not immune to sweetness and an attentive nature."

"You're not immune to much of anything."

There was a snotty edge to his voice that rubbed me a whole bunch of wrong and the Puerto Rican in me came out to brawl without being asked. I yanked my hand off his arm and planted it on my hip while the other one jabbed a finger in his face. "Alright, you and me, we're gonna do this. Right here, right now. You tell me what your problem is in it's entirety and we'll deal with it. Come on, I've got about twenty minutes, Ant thinks I'm out getting air."

The poor man looked like the cousin who got picked to take the aunts to mass on Christmas morning. He scrubbed his face with his hands - a move I was starting to call _Chief's losin' it_ in my head - and looked past me at the door to avoid eye contact. "Can we just...not do this? Because I know what the next three days are gonna be like and I'm not up for about ninety percent of it."

"What's the next three days gonna be like?"

"You and Andy all over each other, putting on a show for your brother that might or might not be more fact than fiction."

So...whether Andy had figured it out or not, Chief had, and he knew what everybody's roles including his own were going to entail. Smart man. Smart but still sorta stupid, and before I could stop myself I laughed out loud, more in frustration than just about anything else. "Chief, do you know _why_ I'm gonna be putting on a show for my brother? Hmm? Do you? Because if my brother thought for _one second_ that the man I really want is my goddamn _boss_ he'd have more words for both of us than either you or me want to hear, because I already have a history of that particular indiscretion and the last boss I slept with ended up sending me across the damn country to make me someone else's problem." I paused just long enough to catch my breath and reload. "So yeah, it's gonna be me and Andy for the next three days, like it or look away. And no hitting him, you understand me? Because I will straight up beat your ass if you ever do that again."

There it was, laid out nice and messy in between us, and we both just kinda stood there trying not to look at it. Chief was so blatantly uncomfortable that I couldn't help but feel a little bit of pity for him. Neither of us said anything for an embarrassingly long time, and then I cleared my throat and tried to soften my voice enough to relax that tensed up jawbone of his before the damn thing snapped in two. "What was it you claimed you do in your spare time? Tuba?"

He looked so confused for about ten seconds that I almost laughed. "Third chair clarinet."

"Yeah, I don't believe that for a second. Extra points for sticking to your story though."

He laughed just a tiny bit, softly, under his breath. And then he pulled his eyes up from some unspecified spot on the floor near my feet and offered me what only slightly resembled a sheepish little grin. "I'm actually not half bad."

"I'd sure like to hear you prove it one day."

"Christmas concert. I'll be the guy in the - "

"The third chair, right. No private show?" I was goading him and he knew it, but the tense mood had lightened between us and he was loosening up, finally.

"I'm too shy for that. Too out of practice."

"But you can embarrass yourself in front of the entire town?"

"The guy in chair two plays louder than me, nobody can hear me over him."

"Always have a strategy."

"Yup."

Another silence fell, but this time we sort of just stood there and let it wrap itself around us like a space that didn't need to be filled. And somewhere in the middle of that silence, he reached out and laid a warm palm against the side of my neck.

That was all it took.

The breath got knocked out of somebody, I couldn't be sure which of us it was because there was a hard slam of my body hitting his followed quickly by a second hard slam, indicating that we were now against the wall by the front door, and Chief had me pinned to it with his own body before I could even turn my face up to his for the incoming messy kiss.

Geezus was it messy. Messy and heated and so goddamn _urgent_ that it had spawned several likewise messy and urgent kisses that spread down the side of my face to my neck...and then trailed further down to my collar bone before I realized yep, it was my breath that had been knocked out, and yep, I was having difficulty catching it back. I grabbed Chief's head and tilted my face up to gasp like a startled fish that's accidentally jumped out of the water and found itself inexplicably on dry land.

_"I want you."_

God, that raspy lusty voice of his. It was almost enough to send me careening into that endless oblivion where nothing matters except the hard pounding need to get as close as humanly possible to another body and take every breath they have in their lungs in a blind attempt to fill your own, but we were cycling back around to the gasping fish again, and something about the dizzying effect of oxygen deprivation brought a level sort of calm to my head. This time the presence of mind was all on me, and as much as I hated having to acknowledge it, I was almost proud of myself for having the strength that it actually took to unhook my left leg from around his back and give his shoulders a push to put space between us.

The next words out of my mouth were a staggeringly painful repeat of almost exactly what I'd already heard once that day, with a minor change in wording but no less agonizing in context.

"We can't do this. Not right now."

He didn't want to stop, I could tell by the way he momentarily ignored me and tried to keep kissing down into the front of my shirt where he'd tugged my scarf open - and I won't even pretend to lie, I wanted him to keep right on disregarding the stop sign I was halfassed trying to shove into his face. I wouldn't have complained if he'd just completely blown it off and yanked my legs out from under me to lower me to the floor and fuck me right there on the muddy mat where his work boots were piled. But a long second later the words finally found their way from his ears into his head and he stopped, breathing hard and ragged against my chest.

"Sorry - I'm sorry."

"I left my phone at the house, Andy's gonna figure this is where I ended up and Ant'll be stomping up here any minute to see what's the holdup. And I've had a little to drink so I can promise you he's been looking at his watch every five minutes since I left."

"Yeah."

He backed up just enough to let me settle both feet back onto the floor. A grocery list of options for the next fifteen minutes were running through my head, but in light of this new understanding between us I decided to bypass them all down to the very last one. His aversion to drunk sex was already a known constant and the only variable left was my determination to get laid.

I could wait.

And if that wasn't a new development unexpected enough to make me shake my head and wonder what the hell was in that whiskey, I think I'd probably be fibbing about how well I thought I knew myself.

This town was doing weird things to me.

"He's going home Saturday. Can we...raincheck this whole thing?"

Chief nodded. "I'd like that."

"Yeah, me too." I turned to reach for the doorknob and remembered why I'd made the trip up here to begin with. "So are we all good on the next three days? Andy's not gonna suddenly go missing and turn up in the bay a week from now?"

The slow grin that crept across his lips sent an almost painful twitch straight through my pelvis.

"We're good."

"Okay, good. That's...that's good." I tugged the door open and shivered hard against the blast of chilly wind that whipped in, carrying the cold smell of snow and a hundred smoking fireplaces with it. Chief reached above my head to hold the door while I re-looped my scarf and took a wobbly step out onto the icy porch. I stopped and turned around one last time. "You're really not lying about the whole clarinet thing?"

He laughed again, that same soft little under-his-breath laugh that was starting to worm its way into my heart as insidiously as it was getting into my knickers.

"G'nite Greta."

I think I smiled at him, though my face was already feeling distinctly frozen from the wind - or maybe it was the booze - and I couldn't be entirely sure if it was an actual smile or a half busted grimace that I finally offered the poor guy.

"Goodnight...Tommy."

Halfway across the snowy front lawn I stopped outside the big bay window on the front of Chief's house, just below it. Music was coming from somewhere slightly more distant than the cheesy cinematic love theme stereo that was playing inside my head - individual notes, strained and sharp, settling into a clipped but loose assemblage that sounded vaguely like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

I looked up.

I could see Chief's silhouette against the filmy curtains.

He was playing his clarinet.

_To be continued..._


	34. An Andy In The Hand and A Chief In The Bush

As family visits go, Ant's three days in Weliveherebutnotforlong could have been worse. So, so _so_ much worse. I managed early on to take Andy aside and tell him I'd pay him whatever he wanted for a couple days of the fake boyfriend bit if he could make it believable enough to keep Ant from looking any further, and the big goof actually had the soft heart to act all honored at the request.

"You don't gotta pay me for it Greta, I'll be your boyfriend," he said with that earnest wide eyed charm and sweet smile that never failed to dismantle whatever assumptions I had about my ability to resist him. He was lucky I was shooting for more elusive game or I'd have strongly considered keeping him - an Andy in the hand was far easier than stalking a Chief in the bush, but my sights were locked and the challenge was just too big of a thrill.

I just had to wait three more days to get back to the hunt.

"Only when he's around though, okay big guy? Not at work."

"Naw, I gotcha. It's for your brother. You want him to think you've got someone looking after you so he won't worry about you, right? I can do that."

I stared at him for a minute, wondering if I should tell him it was actually to keep Ant from figuring out I had heart eyes for Chief. It wasn't that I was scared of my brother...I just knew the extent of the harassment that would be forthcoming would be far beyond my willingness to deal. I reached up and stroked Andy's beardy cheek and gave him a quick smile.

"Yeah, he likes to think I need that sort of thing, despite an entire lifetime of proof to the contrary. Plus I don't want Chief losing his shit and decking you again, so...only when Ant's looking."

He nodded, his beautiful deep set mossy green eyes telling me absolutely everything that was going on behind them. He was honest like that, open to whoever wanted to look at him, not enough duplicitousness in him to make him try to hide anything. I wondered for a second how someone so completely readable had survived working for a crime syndicate and realized that had to have been his secret. He was open. He'd fooled me from the first day, hadn't he? Convinced me he was a blackout drinker and that he didn't remember a thing about our rowdy hookup the day I arrived. He'd confessed to something that made me feel better, and because I _wanted_ to feel better, I believed it without question. He'd snookered the entire department into believing he had blood sugar issues so they wouldn't steal his snacks to the point where they guarded his food from everyone else as well. And he had a whole police force ready to stand in front of him if shit went down, ever. That kind of devotion didn't just happen. And there was probably a lot more that I didn't know about and that no one would ever suspect was less than the truth. That was his honesty. He let you look in his eyes and believe him, and then he looked away, and that little bit of bashfulness kept you from seeing anything else beyond what you wanted to believe.

He was a professional faker, putting on a mask when you needed him to. But not for personal gain - this was a survival thing, and to be honest Andrew Burns on his own would have never made it. The world would have snatched this tall skinny kid and shook him around by the neck just because it could. He'd used what skills he had to earn the trust and devotion of people he needed. But he paid it _back._ He was paying me back right now, playing a role I needed him in for my own benefit. He understood about the give and take of survival. And he was good. Whatever he made the cartel bosses believe about him was no doubt what kept him alive on the inside of an organization where someone as gentle as him should have washed up on the beach with a slashed throat within a week.

He finally smiled and looked away, and I knew it was to keep me from seeing more than I wanted to in his big soft eyes - because what was in there was a whole lot of heartbreak and loss and missing people that he loved, and that was why he was so willing to help me convince Ant that I had someone looking after me. It made me feel all kinds of awful because for all I knew, Andy needed me in some way that I couldn't live up to. Maybe he needed a big sister to make him feel safe or a close friend to talk to at night when bad dreams woke him up. Maybe he needed a mother. Maybe he needed an Ant in his life. Maybe he needed what I was lying to my brother about.

Yeah, I felt guilty about that, more than I'd like to admit...because I didn't need it, I really didn't. This was a temporary situation and if I didn't succeed, well life just went on, didn't it? And this boy who _did_ need it...

Well shit.

We were both liars.

The difference between us was that he could do what I needed, but it was a favor I couldn't return. There wasn't a motherly bone in me, at least there hadn't been before I'd come to this place and met this gigantic kid with the purest grin god had ever set to a human face. But now...I hadn't been here two weeks yet and the guy was making me wish I knew how to handle the soft warm feeling I got in my gut every time he smiled at me. I didn't know if he was awakening something that had always been there or if he was forcing me to learn something entirely new, but there it was, all troublesome feeling and uncomfortable but becoming a new normal. He was lovely to look at in an odd sort of way but it wasn't even that anymore, not now that we were friends. I didn't feel the desire to climb him like a tree now, to tie his bony wrists to the headboard or tangle my hands in his wild unruly hair to keep his head in just the right spot between my legs.

Naw, I was feeling an entirely different sort of need now. And it was creeping me the fuck out.

I wanted to hold him, rock him gently, kiss his closed eyes and shush him to sleep while I watched over his dreams to keep the bad ones away.

Yeah, I know.

Thursday morning Andy and I walked into the station together - we hadn't spent the night anywhere near each other, but to add weight to our story with Ant he had come over before work to have breakfast with us, just to make it look good. And since he was there anyway and on foot due to his truck still being in impound at the station, we gave him a ride and Ant dropped us both off at the front door, spinning tires in the freshly fallen snow while we stood there flipping him off.

Chief was standing in the hallway talking to Kevin when we blew in, Andy laughing that big rolling laugh of his and me screaming and kicking at him in retaliation for the fistful of snow he'd just shoved down my back, and when I finally succeeded in knocking him down to his knees and grabbing him by his hair to bang his head into the wall I looked up to find Chief Tommy Davis, the object of my stunted affections, staring at us with the most solidly unamused look I think I've ever seen in my life. Completely oblivious to our audience, Andy reached up and grabbed me by the front of my coat and hauled me over so that I tripped across his legs and crashed into the glass wall separating the hallway from the main office just as I was noticing Creeley and Sarah staring at us from her desk. And as my face slid down the glass on my way down, I saw Red Hanrahan coming out of Chief's office to see what all the noise was about.

I wasn't even completely settled on the floor yet when I heard the terse growl of Chief's very best _Get your shit together_ voice. "Officers Morley and Burns, if you're finished with whatever the hell it is you're doing down there, would you mind joining myself and the Mayor in my office?"

I was so twisted up in Andy's crazy long legs that all I could do for a few seconds was look up from the floor; Chief was standing above me, sort of staring down at me like a wife who's run out of patience with her husband who's just stumbled home too drunk to get in the door.

"I'm so sorry Chief, I lost my - "

"Dignity? Sense of purpose in life?" Creeley had come into the hallway and was leaning back against the doorway with his thick arms crossed across his chest, smirking down at me as I extricated myself from Andy and got to my feet. "Or was it just a contact lens?"

_"Hva i helvete gjør du der nede?"_

I groaned so hard I'm sure I must have sounded like I was dying, which was a defense I probably could have gotten away with based on how my hip was feeling after that messy little sprawl. By the time I got back to my feet, trying desperately not to let the shooting pain up my spine put me right back onto the floor again, that nutbag Red was standing next to Creeley with the same exact expression on his face that everyone else had...except maybe crankier and even less impressed. "What's he saying?"

"He's asking what the hell you're doing down there, girl."

"Excuse me - _girl??"_

"He said it, not me."

Red was glaring past me at Andy like he would be popping him one the first chance he got. "I'm sorry Sir. Just give me a second to get my coat put away and I'll be right there."

"Don't bother," Chief barked back, turning his back to us and walking out. "You're back in the car as soon as our meeting's over so don't even take it off."

Ohhh this didn't sound good at all. Just the tone of his voice told me he was already done with my dumb ass at eight o-four in the a.m. and there wasn't going to be a lot I could do to redeem myself. I wasn't even sure what I'd done, other than walk in with Andy and trigger all his jealousy alarms - except maybe that whole _failing for the better part of two weeks now to retrieve that goddamn llama of Red's_ thing. Though to be fair, I wasn't trained for that.

What was weirding me out the most though was the fact that the last time I'd seen the Chief he had me up against the wall biting his way impatiently down my throat with two hands full of my boobs, and now, less than ten hours later, he was snarling at me like he'd caught me with Andy's dick in my mouth. Jealousy was one thing, this childish moodswinging shit was for the goddamn birds. I shoved Cree's massive shoulder out of my way so I could squeeze past him and carefully avoided Red, who grinned at me and puffed his chest out so I'd have no choice but to brush against him on my way through.

It was going to be a hell of a day, I could feel it coming like a storm the weatherman's been warning about for days - except I'd been too distracted to pay attention, and now the sirens were blaring and the wind was starting to blow.

"Officer Morley, the Mayor here's graciously arranged an agreement with the school superintendent for you to give Driver's Ed lessons to the Junior High students - "

"What?!"

" - on Fridays starting next week." He raised the Finger of Authority to shush me and continued without pausing. "It's the only way the city can justify your paycheck, since I'm sure you've noticed there's not a lot of extra work around here to be done."

"Now wait just a second - "

"As an extra officer your presence is putting a strain on the department's budget and the town hasn't got the resources to float you for a year without you earning your keep. So you'll be reporting to Officer Creeley next week over at the school's motorshop for your orientation."

"Creeley?? What - _why?!"_

"He's the auto mechanics instructor. He's in charge of the vehicle you'll be using for lessons." He looked past me at Red, who seemed to be asleep over by the door. "Mayor, if we're done?"

Red's head dropped to his chest and he jerked awake, shouting something in Viking or whatever that whack language was that he spoke. "We done?"

"We're done."

"Good." He leaned forward and slapped me on the shoulder, hard. "You want lunch?"

"No thanks, I had breakfast ten minutes ago."

Red shrugged and made some weird noise in lieu of a response, then got up and trudged off toward the door. "Se deg sjef."

Chief nodded. "See ya Red."

After the crazy old man was gone Chief and I sat there, just sort of not looking at each other, until the deep seated irritation churning in my gut finally got the better of me and I stood up in a righteous huff, ready to blow off a head of steam in his specific direction. "I don't know what your problem is Sir, but this is a bit uncalled for - "

"Sit down Morley."

"Excuse me _Sir_ but I think I - "

"Sit. Down."

There was such a heavy edge of no nonsense authority in his tone that I obeyed without even thinking, planting my butt right back down in the chair and flinching when it squeaked like it was going to collapse with me. "Sir if I could just - "

"Morley if you fuckin' call me Sir one more time I'm going to put you over my goddamn knee."

I stopped mid complaint and just left my mouth hanging open; I figured I was going to have a whole lot more to say in a minute so I might as well be ready to let it rip when the time presented itself, but he wasn't quite finished with me yet.

"If you don't stop bustin' my balls there's not going to be anything left for you to ride after your brother goes home."

"Sir?? I mean - _Chief...??"_ I let my mouth drop open in mock scandal. The man had this strangely noble aura surrounding him that made you think he was above crass speech, and then he opened his mouth and proved you wrong, every time. It was oddly sexy in a dirty sort of way that was giving me big problems.

He shook his head and stared up at the ceiling for a long minute like he was conferring with God. And then he leaned over his desk and locked eyes with me, and in those brief few seconds before I stood up and he pushed his chair back out of the way with the back of his legs, I knew the next three days were going to be a special kind of hell.

"Permission to get my ass on that desk - ?" I almost added _Sir,_ but that look on his face was maybe the most frightening thing I'd ever seen outside of a natural disaster. And as much as I would have loved to find out just how serious he was about that threat, now wasn't the time. He cocked his head in a _Come'ere_ gesture and I wasted no time at all circumventing that ancient old desk of his to join him behind it.

He stood perfectly still until I was up in his personal space, looking up at him while he looked down at me. Our chests were the only things that touched, brushing just briefly against each other as we breathed.

"Seventy-two hours isn't that long."

"Yeah, it is."

"Yeah, it definitely is."

He lowered his head just slightly, just far enough for his lips to just _almost_ touch mine, and then the insufferable man stopped right there. "Send Apparently-Officer Burns in on your way out."

I literally heard brakes screeching in my head. "Wha- what?"

He didn't back up and I could feel his breath on my lips as he spoke. "I've got work to do and you're on patrol today. Sarah'll give you your specs, I want you out on the streets breaking up snowball fights in ten minutes. We clear?"

"Snowball fights?"

"Against city ordinance. We've had way too many turn violent so Red outlawed them."

I took a step back from him. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Nope. Are we clear?"

"I - yes, we're clear. _Sir."_

Those hot blue eyes narrowed and he gave his head a little half shake that I was learning always prefaced an expression of pure exasperation. It was a gesture I saw a lot these days. "You're really skimming the ice here, Morley."

"I don't know what that means." I crossed my arms over my chest and stayed where I stood, still in his space but just removed enough to have my own bubble of tenuous authority back and in full functioning order. _"Sir."_

I thought I heard a very quiet laugh as he turned his back and retrieved his chair from where he'd shoved it back against the wall just a moment ago, but I couldn't tell you if it was derisive laughter or just a frustrated noise of surrender. He pulled the chair back where it belonged and dropped into it with a sigh. It squeaked to within an inch of its life but he ignored it, just like everyone else in this town ignored every creaky thing that dared to make a noise of protest. "When you're skating on the lake too early or too late in the season, the ice gets thin in places. Thick enough to support your weight as long as you keep moving, but thin enough to crack if you nick it just right. Late season games, everybody keeps their blades straight, no skimming. Otherwise somebody goes under."

"Is that an analogy for my presence here?"

"Metaphorically."

I can't begin to explain the noise that burst half out of my throat and half out of my nose. "Sir?"

"Yeah?"

"You have _no idea_ what a metaphor is, do you?"

He didn't answer me and we stayed like that for several very long seconds, close enough to be breathing the same air, him staring at my mouth and me staring at his eyes, standing close enough to him that the inside of his knee was against the side of my leg. I felt that knee tilt inward just a little further, letting me know it was there, bringing back a flame heated memory of what that same knee did the _last_ time we were alone together in this office.

I wanted to slide down onto it and grind myself a little, just to feel that tingle again and hear his breathing go funny. But he was being an ass and I was being arbitrary, and wasn't that just _us._

A bang and an outburst of raised voices blasted through the closed door and broke our concentration. He sighed and looked away, and I was instantly reminded of Andy and his honest eyes, of how he got all bashful and looked somewhere else if you stared at him for too long. He knew exactly how long he could keep his eyes honest before all the little deceits started to show.

I was starting to suspect I knew who'd taught him that little trick.

"If I see Andy touch you at any point over the course of the next three days I swear to god Morley, I'm gonna lose my shit."

His voice startled me, all low and growling and sounding every bit like a man who means it, and my wandering head snapped back to the situation at hand. Me and the Chief, not even tiptoeing around each other anymore - determined now to just stomp the shit out of each other's shoes, but he was wearing steel toe work boots and I still didn't have a decent pair of anything. "I know you will, Sir. Andy and I have an arrangement, don't worry about anything."

"Whatever you do to convince your brother, you keep it out of in front of me."

"Yes Sir."

"And stop calling me Sir."

"No Sir, I'm afraid I just can't do that."

He looked up and geezus _fuck_ that look on his face, that burning heat in his eyes, that raised eyebrow that was more about confusion than surprise. It wasn't clear if the confusion was directed at my behavior or caused by something deeper than that, but the completely errant and unexpected thought passed my mind that his wife had probably seen that same look at some point and knew exactly what it meant...and exactly what to do about it.

And if that didn't put a little twinge of jealousy in me, I'd be lying to say otherwise.

Now we were really a pair, me and Tommy Davis. Jealousy wasn't something I could ever say I'd been guilty of before, but damned if I wasn't catching a case of it off this guy.

"Permission to kiss the Chief before I head out, Sir?"

The eyebrow dropped and he snorted. "Morley, get out of here."

"No, Sir. I'm not going without that kiss. You got me ready for it and then sat down, I don't think that's fair and I'm not going until I get it."

"You'll go or I'll - "

"You'll what, Sir? Fire my ass? Please do, I'd give anything to be back in something other than a Ford Taurus all day. And if I might add, these icy roads are bullshit. Haven't you guys ever heard of salt?"

He leaned back in his chair and I tried not to flinch when it creaked and popped like yet another suffering spring in the seat had given up the ghost. "The town's road maintenance budget has been rerouted into your paycheck. So if you'd like to go down to VanSlyke's and buy a few shakers and get busy, feel free to do that. But do it on your way out."

Now I was just getting mad. But I wasn't about to embarrass myself, so I gave him a curt nod and turned around to leave before my temper got the better of me. And just as I was reaching for the doorknob I heard his chair squeak, and before I could turn it he was reaching around me to put his hand on the door to hold it shut. His other hand grabbed my shoulder to turn me around to face him, and then just like that he had me backed up against the door and was holding me there with his own big body. He pushed his face into the side of my neck and his heated breath made me shiver when he spoke in that deep, raspy voice against that ticklish little bit right below my ear.

"Goddamn Morley I want to fuck you so bad it's giving me angina."

I sucked in my breath; the doorknob was digging into my spine and it hurt like hell, but that was nothing compared to the twisting painful _want_ that had flamed up in my gut again. "You should get that looked to, Sir."

"What?"

"Angina, Sir. It's caused by reduced blood flow to the heart. Mind if I ask where that blood is being rerouted to?"

He stopped his exploration of the side of my neck with his mouth and pulled his head up enough to look me straight in the eyes. "Get out of here, Morley."

I shook my head. I wasn't going anywhere until this damn idiot of a male kissed me. From somewhere out in the main office I could hear Red Hanrahan shouting in Icelandic or whatever and Cree laughing his huge booming laugh...for a bunch of people who claimed not to speak the language, everybody sure seemed to converse with that man a lot.

Red Hanrahan wasn't the man on my mind at the moment, though.

"My kiss, Sir. I want it."

"Yeah and I want you in my bed but I'm not getting it so we're both sort of screwed, aren't we?"

His voice drifted off to a hiss as I tilted my hips forward and bumped against him.

That was all it took.

 _"Goddammit."_ He grabbed me by my waist and yanked me toward him, pulling me up hard against him as his mouth crashed into mine so hard that we both sort of grunted in pain. But that little bit of discomfort didn't stop us and it didn't even remotely slow us down - I looped my arms around his neck to keep him from escaping and he backed me up against the door and pinned me there with his lower body while his top half stayed just far enough back for his hands to come up between us to my chest. I think I probably moaned out loud when he slipped both hands over my breasts and gave them a hard squeeze, letting one slide further up to hold my head still by my neck while the other stayed where it was, rubbing and kneading me through my shirt. "Geezus what the fuck are you doing Morley - I can't even leave my damn office anymore."

"I don't know what you mean, Sir." I let a hand slide down his back to the waist of his jeans, waiting no more than a few heavy breathing seconds before I slipped it inside just far enough to feel the top of his boxers. Definitely boxers.

Flannel.

Geezus, this town.

"You know what I mean. You know _damn_ well what I mean."

And then I felt it, hard and thick against my hip, obviously ready and willing and only being held back by the sturdy button fly of his Levis. And those flannel boxers. I think I almost started to laugh, but his mouth was on mine again and those stern lips suddenly went all demanding on me, and then there was no more temptation to giggle about anybody's underthings. That heavy bulge at my hip was pushing against me and my hand that had been tentatively caressing his backside came around to the front without me really instructing it to, and my fingers went straight to those strong brass buttons and the monster straining at its cage behind them.

It twitched when I touched it, and Chief made a little groaning sound that doused my knickers in kerosene and set fire to them.

"Three days, Sir. Just three days."

"God _dammit."_

"I know...I know." He was saying that a lot and I could feel his frustration...I cupped my hand over him and listened to him groan again when I gave him a squeeze through his jeans, then turned my face up to bump my mouth against his chin. "Tell me what you want. If we were alone, what would you ask me to do?"

He hesitated for a brief moment, then bit my lower lip hard enough to almost make me yelp.

_"Put your mouth on me."_

I moved his hand off my neck and he laid both palms against the door as I lowered myself down the length of his body, pressing my mouth against him to breathe first on his neck, then his chest, then his belly, stopping when my knees rested on the floor and my face was level with his groin just long enough to look up at him. His eyes were closed tight and he was breathing hard, his fingers pushing so hard against the door that his fingertips were white.

"Like this, Sir?"

Before he could respond I pressed my mouth against the solid bulge of his cock and exhaled hard so he could feel the heat of it through the denim.

The heavy groan that rumbled in his throat was almost enough to make me willing to fuck him in front of the entire department. And if that wasn't quite enough, the pained look on his face as he dropped his head back was most definitely sufficient.

Three days. Just three days. Ant would leave and Chief and I would tear each other to shreds, and if there was enough left we'd likely do it again.

Three damn days.

His hands came down and I felt them shaking when he put them on my head, his strong fingers lacing through my hair - but he didn't pull me closer. No, surprisingly he tugged my head back and turned my face up to him, and it was then that I saw his eyes were open again and he was looking down at me. There was no confusion, no quirked eyebrow, no irritation or his usual expression of frustrated tolerance. There was just... _want,_ pure and desperate and barely controlled, and one big hand moved down to cup me gently under my chin and stroke my face while I sat there on my knees in front of him.

That hand was _shaking._

"Maybe just...hold that thought, Morley."

I felt a smile creeping its way in, though to be honest I didn't want to smile at him - I wanted to start stripping off clothes and leaving marks, and even though I knew that was exactly what he wanted as well, it was going to be up to both of us this time to rein it in before it hit the point of unstoppable. I needed to do my part to keep us from embarrassing ourselves in front of six co-workers and Red fucking Hanrahan. We had a ruse to perpetuate and my pretend boyfriend was on the other side of the door we were leaning on, probably hearing everything and doing his best to keep the others at a safe distance until we got our brains back into our heads and the blood flowing north again.

Good old Shag and Bag Burns.

Chief stepped back to give me room to stand up. "You alright?"

I cleared my throat and tugged on the bottom of my half-removed coat to straighten it as I got back to my feet, feeling distinctly soggy below deck. "Permission to run by my house and change underwear, Sir?"

He laughed, nodding just a little before scrubbing his hands up and down on his face so hard I thought I would see smoke coming from between his fingers any second. "Do what you gotta do babe, just do it somewhere else. I've got work and if you don't get out of here we're gonna have a problem."

I stood there staring at him as he retucked his shirt into his jeans and headed back to the relative safety of his desk.

"Excuse me Sir, did you just call me _babe?"_

He looked confused for a second, then something distinctly sheepish crept across his face before he broke into a shy sort of grin. "Just get out, Morley." He waved a hand toward the door. "Go change your shorts and then get on patrol, we have icy streets because of you so...go earn your keep."

As enjoyable as it was watching the Chief try to adjust the front of his jeans to make it possible to sit down without injuring himself, I knew I needed to obey him or he was right - we were going to have a problem. Ant had my truck and he knew his way to the station; all I needed was for him to blow in and see Andy guarding the door while Chief and I banged each other's brains out on the other side of it. That wasn't even taking into consideration the horrendous levels of abuse Creeley and Saint would gleefully heap on us for the rest of my stay in Wesohornyville and possibly the rest of Chief's natural lifespan. And Red...geezus, he had the hots for me, if he overheard me with someone else who knew what the hell the crazy Norse fucker would do. The idea crossed my mind briefly that we could slip out and go to a motel, but so far as I knew the only place we could rent a bed without driving all the way to Big Fucks was at the old lady's inn where Andy and I first apprehended Wilson.

A solid no all the way around. We were going to have to wait for Ant to leave and then take it with as much respectability and discretion as possible to Chief's house, because the bed at my place was barely big enough to have a wank in without falling out on the floor.

He finally got his jeans shifted enough to sit down and looked across the room at me. "You still here?"

"On my way out as we speak, Sir."

"Morley - "

"Yes Sir?"

He looked tired, but he was grinning.

"Stop calling me Sir."

I turned the doorknob, feeling enough resistance to know that Andy was leaning on it from the other side. I shot Chief a wink and zipped the front of my coat as I knocked on the door to let our guard know I was coming out. "No thank you, Sir."

Andy jumped away from the door as I came through it, glancing back over his shoulder at the rest of the squad. They were noisily going on about their business, deep in a heavily animated conversation with Red that involved a lot of arm waving and yelling. His eyes went to my hair, cluing me in to the fact that a little reparative maintenance probably wouldn't be a wasted endeavor. "Geezus Greta you look like you got mauled by a bear."

"Boss wants to talk to you."

I reached up and pinched his cheek on my way past him. For some reason I felt pretty damn good despite that increasingly familiar sensation of unfulfilled need unsettling my stomach and tilting my nervous system into the beginning stages of subdued hysteria. Three days. Just three days.

Funny how two weeks ago my mantra had been _Just one year._

Things change fast sometimes. The past several months had taught me just _how_ fast - but for the first time since that morning when the call came in for Joe and I to head out on a Code One pursuit, they seemed to finally be headed in a better direction.

I flipped Creeley the bird for good measure as I crossed the main office with my head up, leaving the front door open and banging in the icy wind behind me on my way out, ignoring seven voices screaming curses at me while the snow blew in.

_To be continued..._


	35. Not With A Bang, But A Whimper

"This is a fairly decent place ya got here Morley." Cree leaned around the corner that led down the long hallway to an end of the house that I hadn't really bothered going into much yet. There wasn't a lot I knew about the place, to be honest - it was a house, and my things were in it, but I hadn't been home enough to even know for sure how many rooms I had. "Is that a den down there?"

"Uh...I don't really know. Ask Ant, he's been here more than I have."

Ant's head appeared in the kitchen doorway, beer in hand. "That is indeed a den and I suggest we take the festivities in there. It's got a TV and a card table."

"There's a TV and a card table in my house?" 

It was Friday. Station party night. Someone had helpfully suggested we have it at my place this week so Ant could meet everybody proper and no doubt so I could be humiliated into doing something stupid by my co workers, and of course every last one of the reprehensible reprobates thought it was just a grand idea all around to do just that. So far everyone but Chief and Sarah were loitering in my house, and for some godforsaken reason someone had invited Ted the donut guy, Steve the taxidermist, and Wilson the crackhead criminal, all of whom were in my kitchen being every bit as noisy as you'd expect a bunch of frozen wasteland hicks to be on a Friday night. Ted I could understand being included, maybe - Chief had said he was part of the original squad brought in on Operation Keep The Irishman From Getting His Ass Shot Off, and I guess retiring in the middle of his assignment didn't disqualify him from participating in debauched alcoholic bonehead orgies. Steve and Wilson were big question marks though. I was going to have to ask somebody about that.

I headed down the hall just as one of the reprehensible reprobates in question was opening the front door to let my boss in, and as I was waving to him Andy came rushing up behind me.

"Greta Greta, wait."

I turned around and was promptly scooped up in my favorite giant hippie leprechaun's ridiculously long arms and hugged to just about within an inch of my life before he nuzzled his scratchy face into my cheek and whispered, "Your brother's looking." Out of the corner of one eye I could see Ant watching us, still leaning against the kitchen doorway, drinking his beer and just sort of observing - and beyond him was the Chief, handing a case of beer to Kevin and taking his coat off while making an overly obvious show of not looking at me and Andy as he did so.

Shit. Shit shit _shit_. I needed Ant to believe MorBurn was a thing, but not while my secret flame was burning dangerously nearby. I didn't even know why it felt so goddamn important, it just did. I could have abandoned the entire charade at any point in the deception but I guess it was stubborn pride and the fact that Anthony Morley would give me shit till the day I died if the truth of it all ever came out.

That left all kinds of bothersome questions open about the future...questions I didn't really want to think about just yet. Because if I wasn't even willing to consider the possibility that at some point later on down the road I might actually still _be_ with the boss in question and have to face the music with my family about it, what the hell was I doing chasing his fine slightly over-the-hill ass so hard? There were other men I could be hooking up with, men who weren't quite so difficult as the Chief of Wesoproblematic PD.

One of them was hugging me right that moment, risking life and limb to be what I needed him to be with nothing but an asswhupping waiting as payment at the end of it all.

I was going to have to put a little thought into this. Later. Chief turned his back to us to shut the door that had blown open behind him, and in that short stretch of safe space I decided it was now or never, even if it was gonna hurt.

And boy was it going to.

I turned my face toward Andy's. "Hey big guy. Missed ya." The words sounded cringey as all hell to my ears but if we were going to do this thing, we might as well do it all the way. Nothing was more realistic in a romantic relationship than shudder-inducing cringe, the more public the better. Without really thinking about what I was doing I grabbed the front of his flannel shirt and tugged him down to bump my lips against his in a mock kiss that suddenly, surprisingly, wasn't quite as mock as I'd intended.

Geezus. Andy and I had fucked each other straight into oblivion and barely made it back to tell the tale so many times that I'd lost count, but this was our first kiss, and...god.

 _GOD_.

His lips were _soft._

Squishy.

Warm.

I mean, I knew that - those lips had all but sucked my lungs out through my vagina more than once, but we had never _kissed_ , not one single time in all that debauched horny bedslamming that we'd done during the first week of my exile. Which was funny as hell because I'd kissed Chief enough times for it to qualify as an extended makeout session, but sex hadn't made it onto the menu even once. And here Andy and I were with about nine hard fucks under our belt and sharing the first timid touch of our lips. I would have laughed out loud if he hadn't closed his eyes and made a little gasping sound that kickstarted a warmth in the pit of my stomach that absolutely should have been caused by some rotgut midwestern tundra booze and not the bump of his teeth against mine.

Something deep down inside me almost wished we could start again with less alcohol and more of _this._

"I'd say get a room but ain't none of 'em got a decent size bed."

Andy and I separated like one of our moms had walked in on us. It was Cree, of course. He was worse than any mom either of us could have conjured and I shot him a glare to let him know commentary was neither welcome nor necessary at this juncture of the evening. While he was mouthing off back at me I looked past him to try to find Chief; he was slipping off into the kitchen, taking Ant's proffered hand in a gentleman's grip that was the second of only two genuine handshakes I'd seen since my arrival. The first had likewise been between the two of them, at the airport in Big Fucks. They were obviously the only male grownups in the entire state of Mentalsoda or wherever the hell we were - they shook hands, there was an exchange of some quietly spoken adult-sounding pleasantry, the situation didn't devolve into a wrestling match and nobody ended up with a snapped wrist, and after a quick clap on the shoulder Chief went on into the kitchen without so much as another glance in my direction.

God but there was something sexy about a mature man who could interact with another mature man without the word _asswipe_ being involved in the equation.

I wanted so badly to follow him. The kitchen was a good place for us, the Chief and me. The last time we'd been in there together he'd opened up to me about some important things and quite possibly pointed a gun at me, which - I'm not going to lie - was still fueling a lot of dreams that always ended with my thighs clenched together so tight my hips hurt. But now wasn't the time. Andy was officially my main squeeze for just about fifteen more hours and this was our one and only chance to make it believable.

"Come dance with me baby."

Andy smiled, that big wide goofy grin squinting his eyes up in a happy grimace of pure sweetness as I pulled him by the hand past the watchful eyes of my brother.

It would be up to Chief to keep his own eyes averted for the night.

For a completely falsified fake-relationship scenario, Andy and I spent a good half hour making it look real enough that it almost started to feel authentic. While everyone else made themselves at home in the home _I_ didn't feel at home in, the two of us slow danced in the livingroom to painfully sappy music that just added yet another heavy layer of assclenching cringe over the whole thing. For a little while there I even came close to forgetting that the man who actually made my britches tickle was somewhere in my house, dutifully avoiding being in the same room with me and probably on his phone making the arrangements for Andy's burial while we pretended to eyefuck each other to George Michael wedding music.

What a mess. A carefully controlled mess, but a mess all the same. It was a good thing that Chief was in on the deception though, otherwise Steve the taxidermist might have to brush the dust off another one of his many jobs and get the hearse out of impound.

Unfortunate. But all I cared about at the moment was selling the whole thing to Anthony Morley. I'd help Chief purge the memory as soon as he was safely on the plane headed back to L.A. And though it felt heavyhanded as hell, I had to admit that the sweet romancing my new best friend was lavishing on me made me feel just a little bit special...even if he did keep casting nervous glances around the room like he was waiting for Chief to come barreling out of the shadows and suckerpunch the shit out of him. We were only an hour into the evening, the very distinct possibility of that very thing happening couldn't be written off just yet. And the sad fact of it was that it had been a long time since anyone had treated me like I was something worth having, paranoia or no.

As Andy swayed me with his long arms wrapped around me and bent over almost double to rest his chin on the top of my head, I realized that of all the cold dead corners of my heart he could have crawled into, he'd chosen the biggest one.

Of course he had. He wouldn't have fit anywhere else. And he definitely wouldn't fit in the back of a hearse, so all I could do was hope the communal kneejerk reaction would be to do their jobs and keep him alive if my little ruse sent Chief over the edge.

It was something of a cheap thrill to be skimming the ice like this.

The fact that I even remembered what that meant must have been a sign of things to come, but my head wasn't up to grasping Chief's mislabeled metaphors just yet.

I watched over Andy's shoulder as Chief slipped out of the kitchen, carefully avoiding looking at us and obviously feeling all kinds of unhappy that we were between him and the front door and a clean escape. The only other way out was through the kitchen, which was overly full of co-workers who would have rude questions and bullying protests about his early cop-out. He stood there for a few seconds and I could all but hear the cogs in his head turning, working out how willing he was to deal with one of his two options: suck it up and spend the evening under the same roof with me and Andy and our fake lovebird act, or bail now and face a lot of incriminating questions on Monday.

He ended up doing what any sensible grown man would do. He clenched his jaw and turned left, heading down the hall toward the one quiet place in the house that wasn't full of already inebriated assholes just waiting for an excuse to act stupid.

That one quiet place just _happened_ to be my bedroom, which oddly enough seemed to be a sanctum respected by the cretins infesting the rest of the house...I would have expected a rotating queue of gigglers lining up to get a look at my now-legendary toddler sized bed on any other night, but this night seemed to be either blessed or cursed with its own special sort of weirdness.

It took all of about eleven seconds for the fact to settle into my head that Chief was in there with it.

"Cover for me," I whispered to Andy.

I stepped into the bedroom and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. The house was oddly wired and there was no overhead light, only a lamp next to the bed whose cord wasn't long enough to move closer to the door. I stood there in the doorway squinting until I could focus on him. "You gonna turn the light on? Or are we going to stand here in the dark pretending like you didn't just leave the party in a jealous pout?"

He didn't turn around.

"Stop it, Morley."

"Stop what?"

"Reading me. I don't like being read."

"Then don't leave your diary sitting out open, drama queen."

I couldn't see much more of him than just the silhouette of his face at the window where he was standing, and when he turned toward me I lost the light completely to the back of his head. But I figured I knew the look on his face without seeing it. That hurt little boy look that he'd had the morning he'd seen Andy at my place and every time since then that he'd felt slighted by my attachment to Not Officer Burns. "What do you want, Chief? I can read you but I can't interpret what I'm reading. You're in that whack-ass language that you curse in. What is that, some kind of demon-summoning darkside Latin?"

He laughed a little, and then a heavy silence filled with the chill coming in through the slightly open window settled around us. It seemed like forever before he finally turned his head so that I could see his face. There was a tiny ghost of a smile playing around the general vicinity of his lips, but he was still obviously tiptoeing around some bruised feelings he wasn’t ready to look at just yet.

"The window's open."

"It's stuck, I can't close it."

The smile turned to a quick frown. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because _so useless she can't even close a window_ isn't a label I feel like having stapled to my forehead along with all the others I've earned since I've been here."

I think he laughed again, but it was muffled by his hand and for all I knew it could have been a suffering groan of frustration. Whatever it was, it preceded a sharp whack on the upper pane that brought the window slamming down with a satisfying kind of thud. "The frame sweats, makes the paint sticky."

"Sounds slightly porny, but okay." The room temperature immediately rose a few degrees with the sudden lack of a stiff wind blowing through it. "Thanks for that - I assume I can trust you to leave Creeley out of the informational loop on this one."

"I want you to dance with me.”

Conversational whiplash is a thing, I'm telling you. I stared at him for a long few seconds before I realized he'd rewound all the way back to the beginning to address the jealous pout issue.

“Dance with you? Seriously?”

“Yeah. You're always dancing with Andy."

"Because _you_ never _ask_ me."

He dropped his head back and looked up at the dark ceiling for a long few seconds, then just as abruptly lowered his stare to the floor. And then his eyes closed, and I knew he was giving up. He was done. I was too constant of a struggle, always too troublesome of a fight for him.

I didn’t want it to be like that, though.

I reached out and took his hand, slowly, and he didn't pull it away. "Come on,” I whispered, tugging him toward me. “It's okay. Dance with me."

"Morley - "

I waited a few seconds, but that was it, that was the extent of his protest. I didn't suppose he had much more in him, and a moment later when he stopped resisting and let me pull him to me, I knew - for a little while at least - that he was flat too tired of all my bullshit to even fight me anymore. And since I knew better than anyone that my bullshit was in fact eternal, I yanked that man right up to me until the toes of our shoes bumped each other.

We didn't get _too_ close - neither of us felt ready for that, I could tell. I'd shimmied into his lap twice and ground myself on his knee at least once and simulated oral on him in his own office for god's sake, but here we were, standing so close to my bed that the edge of my fine Egyptian cotton duvet was under my left foot, and I couldn't even have said for sure if we'd have fallen into it if we'd been alone in the house.

We both knew we wanted it, but we both also knew we wanted it to be right.

By _right_ we meant it absolutely had to take place at a time and location that weren't being shared with the departmental flunkies. And not while Ant was still in town. And probably a half dozen other strict stipulations that might or might not ever fall into place because Chief Tommy Davis and Greta Morley, Colossal Fuckup, were the two biggest determining factors in keeping ourselves from getting laid.

But when I reached up and laid my hands on Chief's shoulders and his hands came up to rest on my waist, the heat from his fingers warmed its way through my sweater and almost, god so very very _almost_ made me consider dragging the dresser over in front of the door. I laid my head against his chest and we just swayed like that, slow and silent, to the muted strains of Bill Withers drifting in from the other room.

Andy knew where I was. He also knew where Chief was. I had no doubt he would keep the babymaking music coming until one or both of us resurfaced or he heard the toddler bed creaking.

Chief's heart was thumping hard under the well-worn soft flannel of his shirt.

"It's French Canadian."

"What is?"

"The language I curse in. I'm from - "

"Moosejaw, yeah I heard." I raised my head and looked up at him. "Another one of those made-up places that I don't believe really exist, just like this one."

"You're probably right."

I draped my arms over his shoulders and let my fingers stray to those golden curls behind his ear, still swaying slowly with him. "How long do you think we have before somebody bullrushes Not-Officer Burns and kicks the door in?"

"About eleven minutes."

"That's an oddly specific number. What're you basing it on?"

"Morley...please shut up."

I had an issue with following orders, that was established fact that couldn't be disputed and I had a departmental review, a judicial inquiry, and an exile to Hell's freezer to prove it. But something about Chief's voice, that soft-edged, slightly gravelly growl that rolled so mellifluously out of his undeniably sexy throat, put all intentions toward disobedience solidly out of my immediate agenda.

"Shutting up, Sir."

If a look could threaten bodily harm via a spanked ass, Chief was wearing it when he tipped his head back to look down at me through squinted eyes. Even in the dim glow of moonlight shrouded in fog coming through a window that wouldn't have suffered from a good cleaning, I could still tell they were so goddamn blue it made my back teeth feel like I'd bitten down on an ice cube.

And then that close contact neither of us had felt like we were ready for just a few minutes ago? We were suddenly ready for it. His hands slid down my back to my ass and gripped hard, hard enough to pop a yelp out of my throat, and just about two seconds later he had me hefted up on his hips and was lowering me onto my back on the teeny little bed.

_"Geezus Christ Morley what the fuck is it with you?"_

I didn't know what he meant, so I didn't say anything. He was mostly on top of me with his feet still on the floor, pushing the air out of my lungs pretty efficiently with that broad chest of his, and when I felt him pump his hips against me I raised my knees on either side of him out of pure instinctual response. He was so hard I could feel him through his jeans and mine both.

"Eleven minutes and counting down, Sir."

"I know, I know. And your brother."

"Yeah." He was thrusting slowly against me and I groaned so hard I bit my tongue. "How much damage do you think we can do to each other in eleven minutes?"

He pulled his head up from where he was gnawing on the side of my neck and squinted at me. "I don't know about you but I could be halfway through a celebratory cigarette by then."

I stared at him, unsure if I should laugh or not - apparently it had been a long damn time for Chief, but his honesty struck me all kinds of funny and I tugged his head down to put my mouth against his. He made a little grunting noise when our lips met and that was it, all my switches flipped, eleven minutes or not I was going to get _something_ before someone shoved Andy into a closet and stormed the fortress.

"Permission to invade your personal space Sir?"

"Granted," he breathed against my chest where one hand was fumbling to push my shirt up and wrestle with my bra. "I'm requisitioning your underwire."

"Use of excessive force approved, I'll send the bill to the department."

He arched his back to let me open his jeans and push my hand inside the waist of his boxers. Flannel. I didn't bother checking to see if they were red buffalo plaid - he was so fully engorged that there wasn't enough room in his pants for me to get my fingers around him, so I slipped my hand in between his lower belly and the upper side of his cock and just sort of rubbed him up and down slowly. He'd gotten my bra pushed out of the way and had his mouth on the inner curve of my left breast, and when my hand reached his swollen head he groaned like a dying man that wasn't the least bit upset at the prospect of his own demise. His mouth slid over my nipple and when I felt him start sucking I swear to god I almost came before his hands ever even made it anywhere near my pants.

This was too damn good. But it wasn't right, not by our own requirements, not yet. We were half on and half off my ridiculously tiny bed and Chief had slid to his knees on the floor and we could hear the laughing and cursing and belligerent good natured arguing of our workmates not so very far away...and among those voices was the deep booming baritone of my sibling, the one we absolutely couldn't have finding us like this.

But god, _god_ was this good. Chief had finally worked his hand down into the front of my jeans and his strong fingers were finding their way into my underwear, and before I could suck in a breath to brace myself for impact he slipped one straight up into that soft warm place that was softer and warmer right that moment than I think it had ever been.

I threw my one unoccupied hand up over my mouth to keep myself from yelling some particularly profound curse word into the not-so-empty void.

 _"Don't make a sound,"_ he whispered against my breast where he was alternately sucking and licking my nipple into a happy hard little peak. I knew he was listening for intruders as much as he was listening to my struggle to keep it together. _"Shhhh."_

That single sound shushing its way over my skin sent a shiver through me and I groaned, biting the back of my hand so hard I thought I felt a tendon in my jaw pop. But I nodded, determined this time to obey his order. He was slowly pushing his finger in and out of me, dragging it agonizingly up over my clit before sliding it back down and in again, and on the third penetration I felt my thighs start to shake. No fucking way was Chief going to make me come this fast - that was just - just -

Oh god.

_Oh GOD..._

He moved up over me again and rested his weight on me, slotting the hard bulging pressure of his cock between my legs to push against where his fingers were fucking me into a quick desperate oblivion at a pace so measured it felt like watching a tsunami come at me in slow motion. He thrust against me, forcing the bed under us to squeak in protest, and the increased pressure of his weight pushing down on me and his cock rubbing against my crotch and his hand between my legs, it was all so damn overwhelming and fucking _good_ that I pushed up, urging his fingers deeper into me and clenching hard to keep them there...and then that leisurely tsunami hit me and I was gone.

_Gone._

I think my entire body must have shuddered violently in those final few moments as it crashed into and over me. I could hear Chief whispering into my mouth while he kissed me, but I couldn't understand a word he was saying because either he was speaking that Albanian weirdness or I'd lost my ability to understand any spoken language including English - all I knew was he'd taken his fingers out of me and everything inside my pants was spasming like it was dying and he was slowly dipping his tongue into my mouth, probably to keep me from screaming like I wanted so desperately to do.

We'd successfully answered the question of how much damage we could do to each other in eleven minutes. The answer from where I was laying was _a whole damn hell of a lot._ I finally opened my eyes and found that goddamned gorgeous man up on one elbow beside me, smiling down at me with the amused look of a guy who was barely out of the bathroom before his hypersexual bedmate blew her fuse.

"Oh god." I covered my face with both hands, a heated flush of embarrassment at my premature combustion making my cheeks burn. Or maybe that was the orgasm sending my blood pressure into the quad digits, I couldn't really be sure until my lungs started pulling oxygen to my brain again. He grabbed my wrists and dragged my hands down.

"Put yourself back together Morley, I'm gonna make my exit."

I stared at him, blinking hard and trying desperately to swim my way out of the black hole that had opened up inside my skull. "What? But you - "

He put one finger up in front of his mouth, shushing me as he stood and tucked himself back into his jeans. "Another day, baby."

For some reason that one word - _baby_ \- uttered by Tommy Davis, in my bedroom, his fingers still wet from sending me off the deep end no more than a minute and a half ago and his cock still so hard he could barely get his jeans buttoned, was the sexiest, most intimate word that had ever hit my ears.

And then another sound hit my ears immediately after, but it wasn't sexy or intimate.

It was just _loud._

"What - what the hell is that?!"

Chief's eyes closed and his head may have drooped a little, it was hard to tell with my attention span shot to death by the noise. Out the window behind him I could see bright lights flashing, punctuated with explosions and the sound of someone yelling. "That would be Cree."

"Is he setting off fireworks in my back yard?"

"Against city ordinance, yeah."

I hastily buttoned my jeans and sat up - cleanup would have to wait a few minutes - and got shakily to my feet to loop my arms around his neck as he was tucking his shirt back in. "Are you going to arrest them, Chief Davis?"

"Naw. Usual procedure dictates I apologize to Red first thing in the morning when he comes tearing into the station shouting for blood."

"Ooh, Red." I dropped back down on the edge of the bed, cringing when the box springs squealed loudly under me. "He's something else isn't he. Doesn't surprise me that he demands blood, isn't that kind of on-brand for creaky old Viking deities?"

"He's got the hots for your ass."

"Yeah?" I flopped back on my back, stretching my arms up over my head and enjoying the lustful look Chief was sweeping over my body with those hot blue eyes. Even in the mostly-dark room I could feel the heat coming off that look. "What about you, does my ass do anything for you?"

"Sits on my desk a lot these days."

"Yeah well that seems to be the only place I can get any action _these days."_

He grinned, shaking his head in a far less frustrated way than he had when I'd first come into the room. "I'm gonna go, Greta. Go play with the kids, I'll see you when you get back from Grand Forks."

I wanted to protest, to reach out and grab his hand and pull him back to me, to do whatever it took to keep him from going out that door - but he was right as usual, and this definitely wasn't the time for us to run the clock over our eleven minute deadline. Andy would sacrifice himself in a valiant effort to keep the marauding huns from taking the hallway, and I would be facing the disapproving head shake of doom that only Anthony Morley could do effectively enough to make me feel the shame of a ten year old caught tying balloons to the cat's tail. It wasn't a scenario I felt like tempting fate into delivering.

Fate wasn't real fond of me anyway.

"I could...climb out the window, sneak off to your place," I said with as much seductive sultriness as I could muster, short of breath and quavery-voiced as I was. "As long as Andy gives me a peck on the cheek tonight on his way out Ant's not going to look any further." I sat up and reached out to slide my hand down the inside of this thigh, teasing him, and when he didn't back up I tilted my head back to look up at him. He just stood there staring down at me.

I believed for about three breathless seconds that he was going to say yes.

"Not while your brother's here, Morley. I don't want us to sneak around like kids. I'm too old for that shit."

And then he leaned over to kiss the top of my head, both of his hands coming up to stroke the sides of my face as he did so.

"G'nite Greta."

The guys were coming back in through my kitchen door just about the time I got to the fridge for something to cool myself down; Wilson had scorchmarks on his shirt but I didn't even bother asking how many flaming projectiles Creeley shot at him. They were too busy arguing anyway, and as the screen door banged shut behind them I made a desperate bid to keep anyone from realizing I'd been absent for the past eleven minutes while they were disturbing the peace and setting fire to the neighborhood.

"Okay, so who's pouring?"

Kevin whistled from behind me and held up two bottles. "I'm the designated doctor this evening."

"Doctor?"

"Yeah, I got your shots right here." He cut loose a raspy sounding drawn-out giggle that didn't sound at all like it should be coming from a chest that big, but not a lot surprised me about Kevin anymore. Or anyone, really. I grabbed a coffee mug out of the sink and held it out to him.

"Vaccinate me then, I've got a fever and sorta feel like I'm gonna die."

_To be continued..._


	36. The Long Lonesome

Somewhere well past midnight I was sitting on the floor in my newfound den, leaning back on Andy's long legs listening to him and Cree and Wilson discuss personal philosophies concerning females while dozing on too much alcohol and wishing I was five houses up the street. Not just up the street, but up the street in a slightly run down but well maintained gingerbread house with hideous teal shutters on the windows, being banged fifteen ways to Friday by the town's main tragic authority figure. But my brother, bless him, was sprawled on the rug in front of my also-newfound fireplace, and the quietly roaring fire burning away inside it was making me so sleepy I was willing to fall asleep in the same room with Bobby Creeley. I lost a chunk of the conversation to my dozy daydream and tuned back in when Andy moved a leg, jostling me into wakefulness just in time to hear Cree letting loose an ear bursting guffaw.

"You kiddin' me boy, geezus you'll fuck anything. Sorry - " He turned toward Ant, hands up in sarcastic contrition. _"Used_ to fuck anything before, you know, _her."_

I cringed. Cree was going along with the ruse for some reason known only to him, but he wasn't doing a very wholehearted job of it. Ant raised his beer in salute but didn't say anything.

"What?" Andy protested, sounding genuinely confused. "She's a woman, all women are beautiful."

Creeley made another loud scoffing sound and shook his head. "Not Luca Minelacci."

Andy got a thoughtful look on his face, staring off into nothing for a long few seconds before finally nodding in agreement that even his generous nature had its limits. "No, not her."

Wilson's slightly glazed expression fell to what I could only call astounded disgust. "Wait, you bagged Luca Minelacci? Isn't she the acolyte to Father Svensson?" Cree threw his hands up and Wilson stared at Andy with pure admiration. "Holy shit man, how do you do it? I mean, you must have a method right? Because let's face it, you're kinda funny looking but you've managed to get every female in the tri-county region naked at some point." He held his hands palm-out toward Ant the same way Creeley had just a moment ago. "Speaking in the past tense of course."

Ant nodded, but didn't say anything again. Cree took a slug off his beer and finished Wilson's train of thought for him. "Including your mom."

"Yeah, including my mom. It's amazing, I don't know how you do it."

Everything in me cringed up. This wasn't the ideal conversation for Ant to be hearing. Everyone was looking at Andy as if I wasn't right there pretending to be his significant other, but before I could raise a protest Andy simply said, "Cosmo."

Every face in the room screwed up in a show of non-comprehension solidarity until Creeley broke the sudden silence. "Cosmo who?"

"The magazine. You know, Cosmopolitan." He put his beer down and resumed the shoulder rubbing thing he'd been doing to me, adding to the fuzzy warm sort of sleepiness that was making my skull so heavy I kept blinking out between sentences. "Everything you need to know about women is in there."

The silence settled in again, but this time it framed several heads nodding in understanding - excluding Cree, who sat there with a mildly confused look on his face as he puzzled it out. "You steal Cosmopolitan from the library?"

"Naw man, I've got a subscription."

"A subscription? You're shittin' me. It's a chick mag."

Andy shook his head while Cree sat there staring at him in disbelief. And then the big cretin grunted and gave his beard a thoughtful rub, then leaned toward us. "Huh. Lemme borrow some of those."

Cade started snickering from the other side of the den. He'd been charging around the room, launching himself off the sparse furniture like a drunk freerunner catching M&Ms in his mouth as Steve launched them at cockeyed trajectories. He hadn't missed one yet. "When was the last time you had a date?"

"I have dates. I just don't date around here where you dipshits can get involved. It's a delicate process."

"Yeah getting them drunk enough to consent to be seen with you, that's pretty delicate."

"Hey, at least I don't have a wife who fucked the jizzmaster over here."

Cade executed a fairly graceless barrel roll to catch a green M&M that ricocheted off a ceiling fan blade before it hit the floor. _"Ex_ wife, captain wank."

Oh wow...this was worth waking up for. Cade's marital status had been a subject of confusion ever since I'd first arrived, but it hadn't crossed my mind that Andy might have had something to do with the final form it took. Ant looked over at us with an eyebrow up, and before I could even flinch in anticipation he leaned forward to stare Andy right in the eyes.

"You get around, son."

I should have shut the conversation down right then. And I tried to, sort of - I turned around to look at Andy, hoping to give him some sort of a silent signal to disengage before it was too late, but the look on his face was hardly what I would call either conscience stricken _or_ concerned for his own safety. I was looking at a man who knew what he was and didn't apologize for it. And what he was was a shameless little slut, bless his sweet soul. He did at least make an honest effort at mild contrition to go along with an apologetic shrug of his overly broad shoulders, though.

"Misspent youth."

Ant just kept staring him down. "You're still pretty young."

Something was about to go very wrong. And it was going to be far beyond my skill set to either derail it or keep it from going critical.

That was when M&Ms started flying faster than Cade could catch them in that perpetually giggling mouth of his. And I've never been more grateful for Bobby Creeley's behavioral issues than I was two seconds later when he grabbed the M&Ms from Steve and hurled a handful at Cade so hard that they exploded all over the wall behind him, sending him into a tuck and roll that ended in a messy crash with Kevin as he miscalculated an evasion. A fight was about to break out, I could feel it in my bones - and it was exactly what I would have prayed for if I'd been even remotely the religious sort. Everyone including Ant turned to watch Cree and Cade lock horns, and in that opportune moment I quietly stood up to head for the bathroom.

I was turning at the end of the hallway when I saw Andy out of the corner of my eye. He'd gotten up right after me and was on his way to the kitchen when Ant caught up to him just outside the doorway, and I quickly stepped into my bedroom to watch.

 _Here we go._ One of those defining moments that makes or breaks a carefully - or in our case, hastily - planned out ruse was just just about to go down, and when I saw Ant backing Andy up against the wall I knew this was it. I ducked back into the shadows and listened.

"You better be lookin' after my sister, boy."

Oh _shit,_ he was using The Tone on him. Nobody survived being spoken to in The Tone without cracking - _no one_ \- and Andy was notorious for forgetting the plan once five minutes had passed since first inception. I closed my eyes and bit my tongue, resisting the overwhelming urge to risk being seen just to peek out and see the look on my poor fake boyfriend's face.

And then the shocker in this particular defining moment came.

"No disrespect Sir but I don't think Greta needs anyone to look after her."

"What did you say?"

"I said, Greta doesn't need a man taking care of her. She's very capable."

There was a long pause - so long that I held my breath and moved just far enough forward to see around the doorframe. Nobody had ever stood up to Ant like that, but Andy was just standing there, not blinking, not defiant, just...standing his ground. After several more long seconds Ant unpuffed his chest and nodded, slowly. "I believe you're right, Andrew."

And that was it. He reached out and clapped Andy on the shoulder, they both nodded, and then he sort of patted Andy's arm in a gesture of approval that I'd rarely seen from my brother toward another human being in the history of ever.

God bless Not-Officer Burns. He'd actually made it through the inferno without setting himself and me both on fire.

Now if we could get Ant headed back to L.A. everything might just go my way for once.

It must have been somewhere around two a.m. when everything inside my house went solidly out of control. I wasn't full blown drunk, not yet, though I was doing my best at getting there - but Saint, Creeley, Cade, and Wilson were all completely off their damn tracks and Ant and Andy were getting there as quick as I was. Kevin was taking his sober designation seriously and doing far more eating than drinking, which was good because someone was going to have to explain everything to Chief once the domestic disturbance calls started coming in. Steve seemed oddly enough to be something of a teetotaler and stuck to the sodas, and Ted was far more interested in setting my kitchen up from my remaining unpacked boxes than either playing with the boys or drinking with them. So when Creeley magicked an enormous deck of cards from god only knows where and shoved everything off the card table in the den with one swipe of a gigantic forearm, the seven of us who were too far gone to have a lick of sense all sat down.

Cree shoved a finger out at me.

"Commando SkipUno, you ever played?"

"What is that?"

"Combination Skip-Bo and Uno with fatality rules."

"Can't say that I have. Regular Uno and Skip-Bo, yes."

He nodded like that was good enough. "Deckmaster lawbook, three second rule and no pissin' around, you throw your card fast or you get penalized a card per second." He shoved a big hand up in my face with three fingers up. "That's three, you have that many seconds to play your card and we start countin' the second it leaves the dealer's hand. That's me, I'm the dealer. You got it?" He still had the hand in front of my face, his own face disturbingly intense, staring at me out of the tops of his eyes with his face lowered like this was an event of dramatic importance and he was the harbinger of a particularly cursed sort of doom. It was then that I realized I probably shouldn't be playing with this group.

"I got it, yeah. Wait a second, did you say _fatality rules?"_

He let the hand drop, slamming it on the table so hard me and Steve both jumped. And then he started dealing so fast I couldn't keep up with the cards, still narrating his whack-ass rulebook as he threw out what looked like a triple deck. "Once the winner goes out everybody's got five seconds to play their hand and ditch their losses, last one with a card in their hand is the fuckin' loser." Cade and Wilson were throwing cards down as fast as they got them - I looked at Andy in confusion and he just shook his head at me and started throwing his own, pointing at the pile in front of me frantically.

"Wait, we're playing already?"

"You keep up or you lose and we don't coddle no pussywillows at this table."

"It's my table, I think I should get a say in - "

"Eights are an instant reverse and when one goes down there's no turns for two rounds, everybody throws that shit down at once. Fives nines and threes are wild, reverse twice on a zero."

"Um, okay - wait, I don't - " I was so confused now I couldn't even figure out what to do and he was still rapidfire shooting out his neverending list of insane regulations; Saint and Ant seemed to be in a dead heat for emptying their hands first and I was sitting there with what looked like twenty cards in my own hand and Cree just kept throwing them at me. Wilson was cackling and Andy was cursing him out while they slammed reverses and draw-whatevers on each other like they had a personal vendetta to annihilate one another, and over the top of all the frenzied too-fast-for-me gameplay our Deckmaster was _still_ reciting the rules.

"If you see some lame dick with an Uno and that lame dick doesn't yell Uno that lame dick not only has to draw eleven fuckin' cards, he's gotta walk home in his skivvies in front of a procession of every vehicle parked outside blastin' their horns down Kipliddee Lane where the old ladies live _because he's a lame dick and that's what happens to lame dicks."_ Everyone recited this part of the rules with him, which was...weird in a psycho culty sort of way. He threw another card on the pile in front of me and I looked around from chair to chair, completely lost and getting more disoriented the more I watched everyone around me frantically slamming their cards onto the pile in the middle. Steve was sliding his cards across the table into Cade's pile and Cade was doing the same to mine, and Andy and Saint were both stealing cards off Wilson while Wilson busied himself very obviously sneaking peeks at the hand of anyone that wasn't looking.

This didn't look like any game I'd ever played.

"Are you guys supposed to be doing that?"

"There's a ten second penalty on anyone who doesn't cheat, loser gets slapped in the tiddie and the winner gets to do it. Play up boys."

"Hey wait what??" The cards were flying fast and frantic and the noise was so far off the charts I had to yell to hear myself over it. "That doesn't sound very bad for you, what if you lose? Do you get punched in the nuts?"

"Nope, tiddie slap." Creeley elbowed Cade in the face to slam a card down.

"I don't think that's very fair to be honest, I mean - "

"UNO!!"

"OUT!!"

_"Oh my god - "_

Andy threw his cards on the communal pile and stood up so fast his chair fell over backwards, scrambling to get away from me - and then in a flurry of cards and scuffling bodies Saint was diving across the table at me like he'd been launched out of his seat by one of those giant cartoon catapults that used to send the coyote over the canyon every Saturday morning. The table started to flip and big males scattered in every direction, fast-forwarding themselves out of the way while I sat there in the same sort of confusedly frozen shock often seen on the faces of wildlife right before they're plastered onto the grill of an oncoming semi. And in the midst of the mayhem while Saint was airborne, I did the only thing my soused head could come up with. I drew both knees up to my chest and planted my feet against his broad chest just as he was on his downward trajectory, taking his weight on what was undeniably the strongest part of my body and pushing up as hard as I could.

It was the most beautiful poetry I've ever seen, still, to this day. I don't know if the timing was just right or if it was just pure dumb luck, but his forward momentum combined with the sorta stupid strength of my hips and thighs sent him flying over my head in an ungraceful arc that landed him flat on his back some four feet behind me. It also tipped me backward and dumped me onto the floor in my chair, but slamming my head into the hardwood was a drawback I was willing to accept for the satisfaction of hearing the delighted whoops of highly amused approval from my colleagues.

_Colleagues._

Colleagues?

I wasn't sure when I'd decided these uncultured ballsacks were on my level, but somewhere along the way tolerance had given way to something almost like a begrudging affection. They were in my house and we were playing games on a Friday night, drunk and stuffed full of delivery pizza from Steve's truck and pretty damn happy all around. And they were sure as _fuck_ impressed with me right about then. I was still laying on my back when Creeley's big hairy face appeared in my direct line of vision, looking down at me with a huge grin and blocking out the light like an enormous sexist solar eclipse.

"Not bad, Great One. Move like that earns you an exemption."

I think I made a noise in lieu of expressing my relief; whatever it was, the sound that burst out of my lungs was enough to bring both Andy and Ant over to look down at me, concern drawing Andy's face into a frown and scrunching Ant's up into a round of spasming laughter. "You okay Greta? Are you hurt?"

I shook my head and grabbed onto Andy's arm, struggling to sit up through an alarmingly sharp jolt of rising pain skimming its way up my spine. I didn't feel so good, but the good news was there would be no tiddie slap tonight, and that was good enough to get me onto my feet with a fake smile that I knew probably didn't ring real true. Saint was still laying behind on me on the floor, laughing.

"It has been a _long_ damn time since a woman bucked me off like that." He rolled over and held his hand out to me. "Last time was at Quantico and I was bein' shot at with rubber bullets. Not bad at all, sugartits."

I slapped his hand away and stood up as gingerly as my suddenly nonfunctioning left leg would allow. "It's _Ms_ Sugartits to you, honeyballs. If I didn't have a herniated disc I'd give you a pop in the jaw to remember me by."

He shook his head and started to get up. "You're not goin' anywhere, I hate to tell ya. You think you're goin' back to L.A. but I can see it in your eyes, you're gettin' the long lonesome for us already."

"I don't think so."

"No?"

"Nope. What in the hell is the long lonesome?"

Everybody went silent and Andy cleared this throat, but he didn't say anything and I ended up looking at Wilson. "What's the long lonesome?"

"It means you're already melancholy at the thought of leaving."

If it hadn't been the appalling truth I might have at least pretended he was wrong...but he was disconcertingly right, and I didn't like the way that made me feel. Because it felt like a hard painful lump somewhere in the general vicinity of the middle of my throat, and it had Chief's name written all over it.

And Andy's.

And, to a lesser degree, everybody else's.

_Goddammit._

It was a fair assessment. I definitely had the long lonesome, whatever it was...but it wasn't about to stop me going back where I belonged, Chief and Andy and the rest of them be damned.

It was coming up on a very ungodly four in the morning before people finally started remembering they had beds elsewhere to be getting to. I'd put myself back together and declared an eternal ban on Commando SkipUno when Sarah put in a cursory appearance, standing on my porch refusing to enter what I'm sure sounded like a gladiator arena while handing me a loosely wrapped bottle of wine that she told me not to open until after Ant left. When I asked her why it had to wait, she just smiled sort of condescendingly at me and said "Good luck" over her shoulder as she turned to leave.

Of all the people in this town, she was turning out to be the one I just couldn't sort into a neat little category. Everyone else jumped cooperatively into their designated stereotype with very little prompting, but not Sarah Pearl. It was a good bottle of wine though, and I couldn't begrudge her an undoubtedly wise unwillingness to stay.

I wouldn't have stayed either, but it was my house and I didn't have anywhere else to go.

I shut the door behind her and went to my kitchen to put the wine away, suddenly overcome by something warmly melancholic...I hated it so damn bad that these morons were right about the long lonesome thing, but as I sat down at the table in the chair Chief had been sitting in when he'd come clean about Andy's big secret and his own somewhat befuddled feelings about me, I realized with a distasteful shudder that a set of words never fit more comfortably. I was missing Chief already, and I wasn't even gone.

I was almost disappointed in myself. I used to be tougher than this, less squishy, less impressed with people and more suspiciously cynical and willing to put both arms out at full length to keep strangers safely distanced so they didn't become something else. Something friend shaped, to channel Wilson and his new age hippie psychobabble shit. Once upon a time I didn't need anything these people had to offer. I didn't need Chief's bruised heart making mine feel all kinds of mushy. I didn't need the challenge of Creeley's combative nature or the quiet mysterious sensation of safety that radiated off Kevin, and I sure as hell didn't need Cade's wise ass to make me laugh or Hobo's snout full of machete teeth to keep me on my toes. I didn't need Wilson to give me something to do or Andy to make me feel loved.

But something in me craved the way Chief made me feel like there was something big and warm and _good_ lurking somewhere in the future, just waiting for me to notice it was there and go after it. It felt sort of like the same part of me that craved Andy's gentle touch, the soft forehead kisses, the sweet nuzzles - hell, even the damn cuddles.

I was getting soft, like when a plum starts to rot from the inside.

And it didn't take much self analysis to know it was really Chief I wanted to be cuddling with, even though it was Andy that had taught me to like it.

The rest of it...the oddball camaraderie of a gang who actually seemed to _like_ me, unlike the department back home who just considered me a teammate...who the hell knew why, but every time I reminded myself I neither needed nor wanted any of it in my life, something sharp and whiny poked me from behind and asked _why not_.

Why not.

I had about a thousand reasons why not, but none of them was sticking at the moment.

My house was finally quieting down as people shouted their goodnights from the door on their way out and left, taking their rowdy brand of idiocy with them, and I finally looked up to find Andy standing alone in the kitchen doorway. I didn't know how long he'd been standing there, but it was obvious he was being considerate of my suddenly pensive mood and waiting for me to snap out of it before saying anything. He was sweet that way. How he'd survived seven years knee-deep in this particular group of sub-humans without being tarnished by them was a mystery for the ages, but there he was, a shiny happy testament to all that was good and slightly off-center in the world.

"I'm gonna go now, Greta," he said quietly, those huge soft green eyes of his sleepy and absolutely ready to snooze off all the evening's beer and stupidity. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Okay...because you sorta look like you're not okay."

I didn't know what to tell him - not while Ant was nearby, at least. I could hear my brother coming down the hall and when Andy turned to smile at him my entire ruse started to go soggy in the middle. He gave Andy a hard slap on the shoulder and clamped a hand around the back of his neck to give him a shake, sort of like how a gigantic dog puts its teeth on a kitten's head to warn it to behave. The Ant Morley gesture of dominance, designed to intimidate and establish boss status.

"You two goin' to bed?"

_Oh no._

Andy looked at me and I shook my head, standing up quickly with a wince. I was going to seriously live to regret that tussle with Saint. "Andy's gotta go home, my bed's too small for him. Kinks his back up."

"The mattress Chief brought over's big enough, you two take that and I'll take the baby bed."

I think I stared off into nothing for a full ten seconds before my brain sparked and started working again. "Chief brought over a mattress?"

"What do you think I been sleepin' on?"

"I don't know, I - " He was standing there just staring at me with _that look,_ and I felt my grip on the situation getting as slippery as the kitten's head in the dog's mouth. "Andy's got to go - "

"You'll have privacy, I won't peek. Just keep the noise down, I'm gettin' a headsplitter off that Badger Brew shit. Geezus what's in that."

Andy and I exchanged a panicked look between us, and then bless his sweet heart, he saved me.

"I really can't stay, I've got to take my meds and they're at my house. Bad things happen when I don't take my meds. I ended up in the newspaper last time." He rushed over and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. "G'nite Greta."

The next sound I heard was the kitchen door clacking shut behind me as he made his somewhat messy but overall fairly convincing exit.

Ant watched him go, and I watched Ant. It was pretty clear he wasn't buying what I'd been trying to sell him, but the question at hand now was which part exactly he wasn't willing to invest in and which part, if any, I should continue hawking. He rapped on the table with his knuckles and turned to walk out. "I'm hittin' the bed Gret. What house should I knock at in the morning to get my ride to the airport?"

I think I stared at him for way longer than I should have.

"What?"

"Look, when I wake up tomorrow I don't expect to see you in this house, you understand? Get your lame ass to wherever he is and don't forget to use protection."

"Where...where _who_ is?"

"You takin' me for a fool? You know better than that. Gimme your phone I'll call him myself, he strikes me as the kind of middle aged dude who drinks himself to sleep at a reasonable hour." My cellphone was laying on the table in front of me and he picked it up, going straight to my contacts before I could make a dive for it.

"What? What are you - ?"

He smacked his hand against my forehead and held my phone out away from me, keeping me far enough away that I couldn't reach it to grab it from his hand. "Heh, you got him in here under his real name. That's not like you, I see everybody else has got nicknames. Stoner Bitch, Logging Truck, oh here's a good one - Marauding Visigoth?"

"That's the mayor. Gimme my goddamn phone." I attempted another grab but there was no getting past him, and when I gave up he finally leaned into my face and made his final demand for information.

_"Which house Greta."_

It was obvious now which part of the story he'd slammed the book on, and it was pretty much the entire thing including the publisher's page. I sighed and pointed over my shoulder. "Five doors that way."

"Aww, neighbors, ain't that sweet. _And they were blockmates."_

"Shut up. God." He took his hand off my head and tossed my phone to me. I slammed it back down on the table. "I sometimes wish I was allowed to hate you. You suck."

He ignored my ill temper and headed out of the kitchen without disputing it. "I'm gettin' up at seven to head that way, you be dressed and coffee'd up and don't be answerin' the door in his shirt or I'm gonna tell him you let all your Tamagotchis die when you were eight because you were too busy ridin' your Big Wheel up and down the street to feed 'em. You're a terrible mom."

"He already knows that."

"Yeah that ain't all he knows."

"What's that mean?"

He stopped in the doorway to shoot me a condescending look. "That man is lovesick for you."

Goddammit. "You tellin' me you've known all along?"

The grin on his face said it all plus a few extra words for emphasis. "Hermanita you're slippin' since you got here. If you ain't shackin' up with the Chief before Christmas what the hell are you even doin'?"

And then he was gone, headed off back to the den to crash on the mattress Chief had brought over without my knowledge, leaving me standing there staring at my phone and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now.

In the end I figured I might as well do as I was told.

Which was completely unlike me, but it was as good a time as any to start.

It's amazing how quickly a person can cover the distance of half a block on pure nervous energy and the leftover buzz of one too many Badger Brews. But the majority of the head full of questionable liquor from my poorly spent evening playing stupid deathwish games with the boys had burned off before I was clear of my own front door, and by the time I'd passed the second ugly gingerbread house on my way to possibly the most ill-fated assignation of my ridiculous little life, a surprisingly clearheaded sort of reason had taken its place. The _what am I doing what am I doing_ that I'd been muttering as I trudged through the freshly fallen snow faded into _I'm doing this, I'm doing this_ long before I made it to the little mango colored house next door to Chief's. And when I reached his porch and stomped twice to shake the ice off my pants before knocking so hard my frozen knuckles came perilously close to shattering, there was just one thing left banging around in my skull.

_This is it._

The culmination of a couple of weeks of sexual tension so eyewateringly palpable that I was thinking of giving it a name and putting out a bowl of kibble for it.

Chief opened the door a few long seconds later and stood blinking at me, his eyes darting past my shoulder and scanning the yard quickly before settling back on my face. There was a question in them that didn't really merit an answer, since the simple act of my being there, on his porch at god-only-knows o'clock, pretty well summed it all up. I held Sarah's bottle of wine up and gave him a sheepish smile, though something a little more seductive probably would have been more situation-appropriate.

Leave it to me to do it my own ass-backward way. I'd never really been all that great in the seduction department.

"Hey."

His eyes narrowed briefly, then he looked at the bottle and the tiniest bit of a smile might have quirked up one corner of his mouth.

"Is that for breakfast?"

"If you're pouring, yep."

He stared at me for a second, or maybe it was more than that - all I knew was I was freezing, he was in the cutest damn striped pajamas I'd ever seen in my life, his sleepy eyes were bluer than anything on God's green earth had any right to be, and it was now or never.

He stepped back, pushing the door open behind him.

And I stepped inside, out of the cold.

_To be continued..._


	37. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

He grabbed me or I grabbed him, I have no clue which way it went to be perfectly honest. But I'll say this - whoever did the grabbing had the right fucking idea, and the next fourteen or so minutes went straight into the sex hall of fame, no passing go, no collecting rent on the B&O Railroad, just stealing all the free parking on the way past. I shoved Chief against the wall and yanked his shirt up to get my hands on that glorious chest of his, but he had me hefted up on his hips and spun around...and before I could track who was where, my back was slamming into the wall where his had been just a second ago. I think I might have cursed at the jolt of pain that shot up my spine, but again I couldn't attest to it under oath. And then he was biting me, teeth digging into my throat, then my collarbone, then my breast through my shirt and bra. He didn't seem to care if I was naked or not, but one thing was clear: the pants had to go, his and mine both.

And that's exactly what happened.

Nothing actually left either of our bodies; that would take too long and all I could think was _now, now, fuck me now goddammit_...he got my jeans yanked open and pushed down just far enough to get at me, fingers shoving down into my panties to push up into me while I gave the waistband of his pajamas a good hard pull and reached in to grip his cock. He was hard as fuck already and hissed through his teeth when I tugged him free.

I laughed when he broke loose from me and bent down in front of me to pull my jeans down. And then he was up and against me again, pushing me back against the wall, nudging that thick cock in between my legs with a lusty groan that made me so wet I actually felt myself gush.

_"Geezus Chief - "_

"Tommy," he interrupted, rubbing himself hard against me. "I'm not your boss right now."

"No, you're definitely not the boss," I teased. "That would be me."

One eyebrow went up and he looked at me for just a second before driving himself hard into me, deep.

I'd probably be lying through my teeth if I made any sort of claim against it being in the top three sex moments of my entire life, and that's including my seventeenth summer when I sneaked backstage at Bonneroo and gave the afternoon headliner a blowjob that he reciprocated with a cunnilingus session that to this _day_ still has them all beat. This was damn close to that, and that's saying a hell of a lot.

A _hell_ of a lot.

The Chief of the Weemeetwa PD was blessed with possibly the manliest manhood I've ever spread for. Randy Andy was a contender for length, but in terms of sheer girth and solid thickness Tommy Davis was a fucking _god_ \- and within minutes I was worshiping that godliness at top volume like a banshee getting dicked down by Sasquatch. My knees went wobbly, my lungs constricted, and before I could collapse between him and the wall he hefted me up again and strode across the room with me on his hips. I may have yelped when he slammed my ass down on the desk at the front of the hallway, but if he entertained any thoughts of stopping to see if I was alright, they were purged the moment I leaned back and pulled my knees up to his shoulders.

And then it was on.

Neither of us had any self control left, and we tore at each other like brainless animals driven by nothing but a blind lustful need to fuck as fast and hard as our bodies were able. He gripped my knees and pushed them outward so that they were no longer holding him away from me, opening me wide so he had an unobstructed beeline straight to my naked pussy with his mouth. I think I might have made the most unladylike noise when his tongue dragged upward to my clit; I actually felt my eyes roll back, and when that warm wet tongue pushed into me there was no stopping my thighs from shuddering against his ears. He licked me for a few long seconds until my back arched so hard my spine felt like it was going to snap, then he pulled his head up and replaced his mouth with his cock. He palmed my clit as he was pushing in and rubbed at me, impatiently shoving my shirt up and tugging my bra out of the way so he could get at my nipple with his teeth.

I was coming before his third hard thrust, and then after maybe a dozen more he came too with a violent groan that made his chest heave.

And then it was over. He dropped his head down and rested his forehead against my shoulder, breathing hard, bathed in sweat and trembling like he'd been doused with ice water while I panted and tried to push away from him. I needed to curl up into myself, to still that godawful throbbing that was making me twitch and writhe while painful little aftershocks made me clench up on him. He was still inside me, too spent and incapacitated by it to even pull out.

It was...

_Phenomenal._

That's not even the word I would have chosen if my brain had been working correctly, but since it wasn't and I couldn't hope for a resumption of services any time soon, I settled for it with a gasping sort of sigh that brought Chief's head up to look at me. He had that emptyheaded expression on his face that men always get in the first trembly moments right after a spine snapping climax, but he at least had the presence of mind to catch his breath enough to squint one eye and ask me in a raspy raw voice if I was alright.

I probably nodded. I also probably went sort of limp under him, and when he picked me up on his hips and hugged me to his front to carry me off down the hallway toward his bedroom and a nice big bed that actually catered to two full grown bodies, it's very likely I simply wrapped my arms around his neck and let him.

"This is a nice bed."

"Hmmm."

"It's - " I flailed my arms limply, too sated and smiley to put much effort into it. "Roomy. And it doesn't have a drop-rail on the side. That's a plus." I wiggled a leg to make the bed shake just enough to verify that it didn't creak and protest like every other piece of furniture in this rattletrap town. No squeaking, just the soft rustle of a thick down comforter that I figured had to be courtesy of Mrs Chief.

The fact that Mr Chief was sharing it with me hadn't escaped either my realization or my gratitude.

I looked over at him, laying there beside me with his eyes closed and something of a dreamy softness to his normally somewhat terse face, and felt just a little bit sad for the guy. I didn't know if I was the first person since the demise of the significant other to cozy down under these particular covers with him or not, but I did know that he didn't seem to have any hangups about it.

That was good, because I didn't intend to spend much more time tossing and turning in that tiny atrocity five houses down.

Chief rolled over on his side, mostly asleep and doing that one last position shift that all sentient beings do when they're just about to give it up and go under. He had to be tired - it had been a crazy long week for all of us, he'd had to spend the last few days watching me play cozy with the guy he was commissioned to protect with his life, and he hadn't been in bed long when I'd come knocking because he'd only left my house a couple of hours previous. And then adding to it all that other...stuff. The good stuff. The stuff that had left us gasping and winded and damp and sore, the stuff that had to have eaten up whatever was left of his stamina for the week and was just about to put him in a fuck-induced coma till sometime tomorrow. I wasn't doing so hot myself, I had to get up soon and drive for an hour on no sleep and a glitchy spine that I was starting to be acutely aware of while enduring the smug side-eye Ant would be firing at me all the way. Going to sleep for twenty minutes wasn't going to do me any favors. A good stiff cup of coffee might, though.

But getting up and getting one felt like the worst kind of idea imaginable.

Chief Tommy Davis, bless his gorgeous softly-snoring self, wasn't making my decision to start my day without ever having ended it any easier. The bed was warm, he was warm, and I knew without even sticking a foot out that that hardwood floor was going to be an icy bitch to run across. Just staying put, hunkering down for a while, burrowing into his side and sucking up some of that heat he was radiating seemed like a real wise decision at this juncture of decision-making limbo. I scooted in for the cuddle and felt something weird and squishy against my knee.

A goddamn wooby.

"This is unnatural."

"Hmm?"

He turned his face toward me and there was just the tiniest bit of a gentle smile settled on his mouth. I think I probably laid there just staring at it for an ungodly amount of time, feeling something - or an amalgamation of somethings - that I didn't really have a lot of experience with.

It should have been just sex. Just sex, nothing else. Sex and a warm bed big enough to turn over in without crashing knees and elbows onto the floor. Sex and a big warm bed and...

I wasn't sure what came after the _and._ But it felt weird, sort of nervous and quivery and soft, and I put it away before it started to bug me. I had better things to do, like staring at my boss's sleeping face just inches away from mine.

He wasn't a bed hog, amazingly. He was big and took up a lot of space, but he wasn't a spreader like I'd assumed he would be. It must have been the insidious cold that made polite sleepers out of all the men in this town, because Andy was the same way - freakishly huge, but curling up into the tiniest version of himself to sleep in an attempt to retain as much body heat as possible against the biting chill the Minnesomething nights brought with them. Chief was sort of tucked up with his knees drawn up toward his chest and one arm stuffed up under his pillow, reducing his six-foot-plus body to the sleeping equivalent of one of those roly-poly bugs that turn into an armored ball when you touch them. He looked so warm and comfy. 

I reached up and touched the deep crease between his brows with a fingertip.

Those shockingly heated blue eyes opened slowly, just long enough to focus on my face for a second, then they closed again and he reached out to wrap his arms around me and pull me toward him.

Once upon a time I probably would have resisted, knowing that it wasn't going to lead to another round of creaky-backed sexual olympics and the simple fact that I needed to start thinking about washing up and getting gone. But there wasn't a single drop of resistance in me on this particular morning, and even less of a desire to skip squealing across the icy floor to stand shivering on the tiny rug in the bathroom, waiting for the water to get warm enough to brave splashing it on my bits. I turned over and put my back to him and let him pull me up against him in a shockingly well-fitting big spoon/little spoon hug that instantly started a delicious transfer of comfortable heat from his body to mine.

I could get used to this.

I slipped my hand into his and pulled it up under my chin, sighing contentedly when he moved his fingers to intertwine them with mine. We were just settling into a blissful sort of half sleep with Chief pushing gently into my back with that drowsy halfhearted hip-thrust men do when they're half gone but still a little bit horny, when a distinctly foreign voice started laying a curse on my vagina from inside the folds of my discarded coat somewhere over by the door. The groan that whispered pitifully through the quiet room could have been either of us, but I'm pretty sure it was me.

"Geezus, Creeley."

The bed shook a tiny bit, and with a little tinge of slightly annoyed disbelief I realized Chief was laughing.

"It's not funny, the bastard changed my alarm."

I could feel his warm breath on the back of my head as he tightened his arms around me. "Ignore it."

"I can't, I have to take Ant to Big Fucks."

A slight pressure nudged at my backside and Chief's arms tightened again, pulling me closer into his front while his free hand slid upward slowly toward my chest. "No you don't. I texted Andy to take him. Turns out your brother already called him."

"Ant called Andy to drive him?"

"Appears so." That hand was slipping up under my shirt now, moving warmly over my breast where his fingers sent a shivery tingle through my belly as they teased briefly at my nipple. I groaned and pushed back against him, and that was all it took. The hand I'd been holding under my chin freed itself and moved swiftly down my belly to find its way between my legs, and as he used that hand to pull me back so that he could slip inside me from behind while he rubbed me, the only thought passing through my foggy brain was the annoying proclamation that Ant was right - I had been slipping since I'd gotten here. But it felt like one of those exhilarating slides down a blind hill in the dark when you don't have the vaguest inkling what's waiting for you at the bottom of the slope, so you just close your eyes and enjoy the thrilling ride until you have no choice but to crash into something, or just...veer off into the unknown, hoping for the best.

Or at the very least a fairly soft spot to land on.

It wasn't ideal, but it was what we had to work with. We had a whole year to sort it into something that worked better.

Maybe two.

_To be continued..._


End file.
